Stab Right Through
by Yuudan
Summary: Sixth Year AU. Getting lost in old memories is a dangerous thing for anyone, but in Harry's case the whole situation is slightly more literal than usual, and - as it always tends to be - much, much worse. (Features Time Travel, Angst and improbable theories of Time, Space and Magic)
1. Chapter 1

"Merlin's beard, Tom!" yelped memory-Slughorn. "Seven! Isn't it bad enough to think of killing one person? And in any case . . . bad enough to divide the soul . . . but to rip it into seven pieces . . ."

Slughorn looked at the young Riddle with a disturbed expression, perhaps starting to realize his true nature for the first time. Harry tried to meet Dumbledore's eyes, wondering what the old man thought of this, but the Headmaster appeared entirely focused on the memory playing out in front of them, seemingly refraining from blinking lest he missed something of importance.

If he was getting this right, didn't it mean Voldemort had split his soul seven times? Even contemplating it made him sick to his stomach . . .

And even leaving aside the unnatural act of ripping one's soul apart multiple times, this probably meant there were seven pieces of Voldemort's soul to somehow get rid of before he could even contemplate killing the man – or whatever he had become.

"This is all hypothetical, what we're discussing, isn't it? All academic," Slughorn was saying, though Harry could tell he was regretting the conversation very much. After reassuring the Potions Professor, memory-Riddle left, but not before Harry had glimpsed his face – it looked feral.

"Thank you, Harry," said Dumbledore quietly. "Let us go back now . . . "

Harry was all for the idea, really – they had a lot to discuss after this particular revelation, and Dumbledore must have some more information to add – but the universe didn't seem to agree. Instead of soaring weightlessly, or being automatically ejected like every other time, the opposite seemed to be happening – it felt like he was being dragged down by force, like someone had grabbed his legs and was refusing to let go. He looked down at once, and saw Slughorn's carpet, on which he'd been standing, had started to swirl and collapse around his feet, forming a vortex he was already knee-deep in.

"Profesor!" he shouted at the disappearing figure, "Professor –"

Dumbledore noticed his plight, and alarmedly tried to grab a hold of his outstretched arm, even while being in the process of being expelled by the memory.

"Harry, don't let go of my hand!" the Professor said urgently, gripping his own sweaty hand with his good arm, "Focus on your mind, and try to – "

But he never found out what he had to try, because Dumbledore was violently blown away like a leaf in the wind, and disappeared in the distance, presumably out of the pensieve.

Meanwhile, the scene around him – Slughorn alone in his office, eating candied pineapples with a perturbed expression – dissolved like the rain had washed it away, replaced by a thick white mist that didn't let Harry see anything further than his nose.

He tried yelling for help, and tried focusing on his mind – whatever that meant – but with every pasing moment he was getting dragged deeper. Before he knew it, he was submerged to his waist, and thought he glimpsed an endless expanse of sand through the mist . . .

He heard Dumbledore yell "Harry!" from somewhere far, far away before the world turned black and he had the dinstinct feeling of falling down from a great height.

And then he did fall, with the sickening crack of broken bones, on what felt like metal spikes.

He made a squeaky sound like a dying seal, but in his defense his back hurt really badly and he couldn't feel his left arm.

"Why, hello there," a calm, if slightly confused voice intoned from beside him, "And who might you be?"

Harry jumped, or at least tried. Big mistake. He almost _screamed_ with the pain.

But that voice . . . he cautiously turned his head to the side and realized a number of things simultaneously. For one, it wasn't spikes he'd fallen on, but Dumbledore's desk, which was more or less the same thing given the many metallic and pointy instruments that populated his worktable. Secondly, that was indeed Dumbledore who was staring at him perplexedly, but not any Dumbledore. Oh no. It was an auburn-haired Dumbledore, with marginally less lines on his face and an even bolder – if possible – taste in fashion. His arms were also both perfectly fine. In fact, he resembled very much the one he'd seen in the other memories he'd been shown. The one from _fifty_ _years_ _ago_.

Harry opened his mouth, to answer the question or to splutter he didn't know.

What came out was a feeble, "Merlin's saggy ballsack," before he passed right out.

"Are you awake, lad?" a brisk female voice asked as soon as Harry opened his eyes. He didn't need to ask where he was, the white ceiling all too familiar after years of waking up to it. He was in the infirmary. That was nice. It meant it had all been a bizarre dream – Voldemort hadn't created seven horcruxes after all and he hadn't been sucked into a memory vortex-thing, and –

And that wasn't Madame Pomphrey. And Dumbledore, who was standing next to his bed, was still red-headed and perplexed.

 _Blast_.

"Am I?" he answered wryly, "No, I don't think I am,"

The unknown nurse – blonde, with an unfortunate nose – started to fuss around his head with her wand, muttering to herself.

"I fixed his back, but his arm needs rest and a bone-mending potion every day for two weeks," she said, presumably talking to Dumbledore, "There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with his head,"

"Nothing? Are you sure?" Harry croaked, "Maybe you should check again,"

The nurse sent an unimpressed look his way, but repeated her spells and confirmed, "Your head is perfectly fine,"

Dumbledore nodded and said, "Thank you, Madame Spleen. I'd like to exchange a few words with our guest, if it's all the same to you?"

Madame Spleen nodded and left them alone in awkward silence, at least for Harry. Dumbledore seemed impervious to such pesky things as awkwardness, even as a slightly younger old man.

"Professor Dumbledore," Harry said hopefully, "I don't suppose you know who I am?"

It was unlikely by a long shot, but who knew? Maybe the headmaster had simply dyed his hair and the situation had nothing to do with him, for once.

. . . Yeah, right.

"I'm sorry, but I don't think I've ever seen you before. And I make a point of knowing the names and faces of everyone in the castle," the headmaster said pointedly, "I also make a point of checking the anti-apparition wards every month . . . would you mind explaining who you are and how you got in my office?"

"I'm Harry, and . . . I'm not sure what happened, Professor," he said honestly, trying to sit up without jostling his arm, "I was in your office, watching a memory in the pensieve, and then _bam_ – I was sucked into this vortex thing and fell on your desk,"

Dumbledore blinked at him a few times and started to say, "In . . . my office? With me?" but then something seemed to occur to him and he asked cautiously, "If I may ask, what memory were you watching?"

"My potions professor's memory from 1943," he replied honestly. No point in lying – maybe he was still dreaming, but if he wasn't Dumbledore was sure to be the only person who could help him out of this pickle.

The professor stilled, and stared at him at length with those eerily penetreting eyes of his. Finally, as if accepting that he was telling the truth, he said quietly, "Today . . . is 1 September 1942,"

Harry's eyes widened and he repressed the knee-jerk reaction of yelling 'Lies!' and shutting his ears. But it did seem extremely unlikely . . .

Dumbledore, seemingly reading his mind, twirled his wand murmuring "Tempus," and sure enough, the numbers wobbling two-dimensionally in the air confirmed what the professor had said.

Minutes and minutes of silent, dumb-struck denial ticked by, until Dumbledore cleared his throat and assumed a very grave air.

"I can't help but notice that you seem to know me personally, Harry, and if you were watching a memory in my office, a memory that has yet to happen . . . I'd have to deduce that you travelled here from the future, however unlikely that sounds,"

Despite Madame Spleen's reassurances, Harry's head felt like someone had used it as a gong and it was still ringing.

"But sir . . . ! How's that even possible? I wasn't doing anything related to time at all – I was watching a memory, taken from Professor Slughorn's head! If anything I should have ended up in his head!"

Dumbledore, still looking remarkably calm, replied, "Magic cannot be taken lightly, Harry, especially when interacting with the mind. It is entirely possible that your Professor's memories acted as a gateway between the present and the past – or for us, the future and the present,"

Trust Dumbledore to start theorizing in three seconds flat. "A gateway?" he repeated somewhat dazedly, "But you were with me sir! Why was it only me who ended up here?"

"Such things cannot be divined without proper study, my boy. Time, mind and magic are the most enigmatic and incomprehensible things in existence, and you seem to have run afoul of all three at the same time,"

After that they fell into helpless silence, Harry trying to come to terms with it all, and Dumbledore looking like he was terribly curious about something but at the same time dreading to hear about it.

"Aren't you going to ask why we were watching Slughorn's memory of 1942 together, sir?"

Dumbledore looked guilty for a moment, then said firmly, "Such matters are best handled by the people most qualified to – I'll contact the Department of Mysteries at once, Harry, so you must refrain from revealing anything until then,"

"The Department – ? But . . . I need help," he said with a truly pathetic amount of desperation, "I need _your_ help. I'm sure – if you just hear me out for a moment, I'm sure –"

The professor raised a hand to stop him, and said sadly, "I'm sorry, Harry,"

Harry tried not to feel crestfallen, and failed. Even knowing that this Dumbledore didn't know him, the cold rejection stung.

Dumbledore stepped away from Harry's bed and headed for the door, "Wait here, I'll firecall Unspeakable Croaker, he should be here shortly," he said, then he paused and turned around, looking more vulnerable than Harry had ever seen him, "You mustn't tell me anything, Harry. I proved it, time and again – I cannot be trusted with this kind of power,"

Then he disappeared in the corridor, and Harry gave a half-hysterical snort.

"And you think _I_ can?!"

Waiting with nothing to do, Harry tried napping a bit, hoping to Merlin and Morgana and every deity he knew that he'd wake up and find out he'd dreamed the whole thing. And yet, when he woke from his feather-light fitful sleep, his broken arm was there to remind him that no, everything was real. He was in the past. In a past where he hadn't been born yet – hell, his _parents_ hadn't been born yet – where nobody knew him. Where Ron and Hermione were nowhere to be seen and Dumbledore wasn't yet old and all-knowing.

After a while he tried to get up, but doing that without moving his back was sort of impossible, so he gave up. Dumbledore had said an Unspeakable would be coming. Surely, he would know how to send him back to his time – he did remember from last year's escapade to the Ministry, that the Department of Mysteries had a Time room, full of Time-turners and whatnot...

Just then, the door opened and a tall man with glasses and an odd moustache stepped in, his almost black eyes immediately finding Harry and staring unblikingly at him. Dumbledore lead the wizard to Harry's bed and said, "Harry, this is Unspeakable Croaker, he studies time, as it happens, and would be very interested to know the circumstance of your accident,"

Croaker opened a briefcase and handed him a folder, saying, "A pleasure, Harry. You understand this sort of thing doesn't happen every day, but enough that there is a procedure to follow – firstly, you must fill in that form – you may leave out things if you wish, but I must warn you that the paper is spelled to prevent untruths from being written upon it, so please refrain from lying,"

Harry didn't bother looking at the form and demanded, "You'll return me to my time, right? You have a Time room at the Department, so you must know how, right?"

Dumbledore stilled and Croaker looked at him sharply, his eyes lingering on his lightning bolt scar, and he said softly, "Now how would you know that, Harry?"

But he didn't want an answer, Harry could tell. He would have thought an Unspeakable, and one who worked with time at that, would be especially interested to know everything he could grill out of Harry, but apparently Dumbledore's friends were as wise as him.

"No, I'm afraid we haven't the means necessary to do that just yet," Croaker answered to his earlier question, "But your accident may help us get closer sooner,"

Harry lowered his eyes to the form even as a weight plunged into his stomach – he'd never go back to his time, never see Hermione and Ron again. Or Ginny...

Or well, wizards lived long lives, so he'd probably live to see them be born and grow up, but they'd never be friends like they were now – had been – never share all those adventures...

His sight became blurry and he was mortified to discover that he was, in fact, crying.

Croaker and Dumbledore tactfully refrained from commenting, and he was able to calm down and pretend nothing was wrong without incident.

He filled out the form in a matter of minutes, detailing what had happened to the best of his capabilities, hoping against hope that it would help the Unspeakables send him back. He wrote only his first name, not quite trusting the document with his full, famous name. Then he described the vortex of sand and the swirling white mists, and the sensation of falling down that had resulted in a literal fall on Dumbledore's desk. The form asked for a description of his background, which he refused to share as his background was not only distinctive and rather unique, but also something he preferred to keep to himself. The rest was normal enough – blood status, would-be date in his timeline, school he'd been attending and so on.

When he was done, Croaker skimmed it interestedly and asked clarification on some points, ("what color was the sand?", "How far did they extend?", "Was there a sun?" and so on) then stuffed the form in his briefcase and pulled out a roll of parchment marked by an official-looking seal.

"Don't worry about the form – it will appear blank to anyone outside the Department," the Unspeakable tried to reassure him, "Now this, this is a contract of sorts, also part of the procedure for time travellers. It will stop you from spilling the beans on things like politics, wars, natural disasters, economy and so on,"

After his drop of blood had been spilled where indicated, Croaker looked him in the eye and said, "The contract is not perfect, as you may have guessed, but then nothing human-made is, is it? I would still advise you not to divulge too much, as our department will be keeping an eye on you,"

Harry nodded distractedly. This seemed all pretty inconsequential before the looming knowledge that he would not be getting back to his time, would not get to kiss Ginny or avenge his godfather, or even get to see Ron and Hermione get married like everyone knew they would. Would they miss him? Would someone else fullfill the prophecy in his place?

Irritatingly, a picture of the Dursleys celebrating his disappearance popped in his head.

"The contract will keep you from revealing anything of great impact, but you'll be able to talk about innocuous tidbits normally – which I'd be careful with, by the way," Croaker stressed, "We will try to keep an eye on you, of course, but you have more than that to worry about. I don't know if it's the universe, the forces of time or magic itself, but something always happens to people who are more loose-lipped than they should. Many time-travellers suffered a horrifying fate for their carelessness,"

"Horrifying? Like what?" Harry asked, fascinated and nauseaous all at once.

Croaker leaned forward, an intense look in his eyes, "A woman who told everyone who asked about the future under the guise of being a seer, one day became inexplicably and incurably insane. They had to strap her to a bed until the end of her days. Another example is the man who published everything he knew on the newspapers looking for fame and money, and ended up paranoid and unable to get out of his house. he killed himself soon after that,"

Satisfied that Harry was suitably disturbed, Croaker cocluded, "It might just have been that living in a time not meant for them messed them up, but . . . you'd do well to be careful, anyway,"

At Harry's coscentious nod, Croaker got up and extracted a contraption that Harry recognized after a few seconds as a camera. Bloody hell, did it look old. The unspeakable muttered some spells on it, swirling his wand in small circles, and said, "Now if you would, I'd need some photographs,"

After that, throroughly documenting his appearance from all angles in what Harry suspected would become moving pictures of his puzzled blinking, Croaker left.

Dumbledore, perhaps interpreting Harry's pale face, reassured him, "He's mentioned only the blatant cases. It's actually a lot more common than you would think, for someone to be misplaced sometime else, and the great majority of them manage to live a normal life just fine. No need to worry, Harry, I'm sure you will be alright,"

"I hope so," he muttered, but he was still spooked and jittery.

After a few minutes in which Harry contemplated the complete joke that was his life and Dumbledore looked out of the window, Madame Spleen made another appearance, this time with a tray of about ten different-sized, different-coloured potions hovering about her elbow.

Harry made a face, but the routine of being in the infirmary and being fed foul-tasting potions was actually calming in its extreme familiarity – he'd been at it since first year, after all, and this almost seemed just one more of those adventures that had seemed insurmountable when he was living them but had ended up mere memories over time.

Except this time there was no clear enemy to defeat or person to save, no clear course of action that lead him to his objective, that is going back home – which had been deemed impossible by both Albus Dumbledore _and_ the head Unspeakable . . .

But there had to be a way, and goddammit, he was going to find it if it took him _decades_ to do it. So what if those old geezers thought it was impossible? He was Harry Potter, his very existence and survival had hinged on impossibilities since he'd been one year old.

They thought travelling back to his time was impossible, but then he bet they would say the same about surviving the killing curse.


	2. Chapter 2

As soon as she was finished shoving potions down his throat, Madame Spleen told him he could move his back now. Harry couldn't get out of there faster.

But it was sheer habit – as soon as he reached the door he stopped dead in his tracks. Where could he go? It wasn't as if Ron and Hermione were in the Common room waiting for him to catch them up on the latest mishap he'd gotten into...

Perhaps interpreting his dismayed silence, Dumbledore inquired gently, probably already suspecting the answer, "Harry, do you have your wand?"

Panic flooded him as he patted his pockets and found them empty, and Dumbledore was quick to say, "If you bought it from him, Ollivander will probably have it,"

"I'm. I'm going right now," he said, hurrying out of the hospital wing decisively. He made it about three steps befor abruptly stopping. "I... um, have no money,"

The deputy headmaster looked exasperated for a second, but then offered to lend Harry his fireplace so he could floo there like a sensible person, and insisted on accompanying him.

"Whatever," he said shorly.

Considering the old man would also be paying for the wand, Harry probably ought to have behaved more graciously, but _really_. He was stranded in an unfamiliar time and one of the few adults he'd actually grown up _trusting_ had in no uncertain terms refused to get involved with finding a solution – he was honestly too frazzled to be polite at this point.

When he stepped – more like leaped – out of the emerald flames, Ollivanders was behind the counter as expected. The shop was as dusty and tiny as he remembered, and the shopkeeper himself looked, eerily enough, exactly the same he'd been in Harry's time.

 _Exactly_ the same.

As in, unnaturally so. He ought to have been younger by fifty years, but he was precisely as old as he'd been and not a day younger. He also seemed to recognize Harry. Well, he said 'seemed to'.

He actually greeted him with a hearty, "Hello again, Harry. How're you this fine day?"

Which had made him trip on his own feet and almost end up sprawling on the cobwebbed floor. Even Dumbledore seemed to have been caught wrong-footed, which was a lot to say, considering he'd reacted to someone appearing out of thin air and crashing into his desk with a polite 'Hi there, and who might you be?'.

"You – you know who I . . . ? Are you – How is –" he spluttered incoherently, pointing an accusing finger at the old man. Well, he said old, but who knew really?

"I'm sure I don't know anything, my boy," he had the gall to reply, serenely, "The only thing I know is that you came here before and that you need a wand. The same one, I presume?"

"Yeah..." he said, watching disconcertedly as Ollivander went to retrieve his wand from the same spot he had all those years ago. He narrowed his eyes and demanded, "Are you a time-traveller too?"

He chuckled. "So you're traipsing through time now, are you? I wish you the best of luck, my boy, I'm sure you'll need it," he reemerged, eyes twinkling merrily, "And no, I'm not a time traveller myself . . . I'm actually the exact opposite,"

"What does that mean?" Harry asked with ill-grace. He was so not in the mood for riddles right now.

"This shop is, well . . . you could say it exists outside of time," Ollivander said vaguely, opening the lid of the familiar rectangular box and offering it to him. "Foreign to the concept of linearity. Resistant, perhaps, to the laws of chronology. . . "

"Yes, you do seem not to be any younger than you were in my time," Harry commented, "Are you even human?"

Ollivander smiled slightly, apparently not offended in the slightest by Harry's rude manners, "Mostly human, yes, but a wandmaker at the core," then he waved a hand and said, in the same impatient tone of Harry's first visit, "Well go on then, try it!"

Despite himself, Harry felt eleven again as he gripped the phoenix wand with suddenly clammy fingers. A thought cut through his delight – what if the wand refused him? What if he had to look for a new one? What if there wasn't a wand for him at all, anymore –

But no, as soon as his fingers closed around the familiar and beloved stick, the light and the warmth and the phoenix song engulfed him just like they had the first time, and it felt even better because the wand seemed to actually _recognize_ him as an old friend.

When he was done getting teary over his reunion with a mostly non-sentient piece of wood, another sudden doubt overcame him.

"Won't this mean that when I'll be born in fifty years there won't be a wand for me?"

Ollivander managed to look sad without moving a single muscle of his face, and said quietly, "I'm afraid time doesn't leave loose ends – from what I've seen, only one of you can exist in the same timeline . . . this most likely means that you will never . . ."

"I will never be born?" Harry guessed, hating the lost tone of his voice. No wonder Croaker thought it was impossible to go back – there might be no place for him to return _to_.

Dumbledore silently herded him outside of the shop, and, taking advantage of his near-catatonic state, pushed him into Madame Malkin's, where he bought Harry a few uniforms and some time-appropriate clothes. He was so morose and indisposed, that he didn't even bother to look around the street for all the strange and unusual things of this time – _horses_ for Merlin's sake – that would've normally amazed him.

When they got back to Hogwarts, night had fallen already, and Harry though still mostly desperate, had been greatly heartened by Ollivander recognizing him and speaking to him from one acquaintance to another, _knowing_ him. It was the first time he hadn't felt completely out of place since arriving in the forties. They hadn't actually known each other that well in Harry's time, but now Ollivander was the one who knew most about him in the world – which was really, really odd.

At about eight, Dumbledore told him, "Wear you uniform and come find me in my office when you're done,"

Harry was still wearing the clothes from his time – which explained why Madame Malkin and the other people in the street had looked at him so weirdly. He quickly changed into the fifty-year-old version of his familiar uniform and set off to Dumbledore's office.

He got as far as the gargoyles, before remembering that the old man – who wasn't quite _that_ old yet – hadn't been made headmaster yet. And sure enough, he found him in what in his time had been McGonagall's office. _Weird_.

"Now Harry," Dumbledore said, looking meaningfully over the half-moon glasses. He was holding a white quill over a roll of parchment. "Your last name?"

"It's P-" he started to say, before the deputy headmaster interrupted with a pointed cough. Then he repeated slowly, "Your last name, Harry?"

Oh. _Ooh_. He wanted him to invent an acceptable surname, that wouldn't mess things up or raise questions . . . which 'Potter' definitely would. Since it was the name of a pureblood family – that'd definitely not go over well. Shit, there were other Potters around now. The idea hit him suddenly. He had relatives. Actual relatives – his... grandparents?

 _Shit._

"Evans," he finally croaked. It was the only thing he could think of. His mother's last name. A shred of familiarity to cling to.

If Dumbledore noticed him falter, he didn't show it, because he simply continued, "I think it would serve the situation best if you were a muggleborn, don't you?"

Harry nodded. He saw the point. Nobody would care about his parents if he said they were muggles, while if he declared himself a half-blood or a pureblood, people were bound to ask and confirm and ultimately disprove his claims, and raise a lot of awkward questions about his existence.

"Very well, then, Mr Evans," Dumbledore said after he was finished scribbling, "You are now officially a student of our fine institution. I spoke with the headmaster Armando Dippet earlier, and he gave his consent to admiting a fifth year student in unusual circumstances,"

Harry took mental note of fact that like what he'd seen in Riddle's memories, Dippet was pretty useless as a headmaster, and that Dumbledore pretty much ran the show – then he realized, "Fifth year?! I know I'm not exactly tall, but I was in the middle of my sixth year when I was dropped here!"

"I see. I wasn't sure, but I thought this might be the case. . . However, wouldn't you say adapting to a different time will tire you enough without adding new study material to your workload?"

Adapting? Yeah, as if he was going to stay here. "I suppose. . . " he said anyway.

"Besides, OWLs results are quite necessary to proceed to sixth year, and the nearest date isn't until march, I'm afraid,"

Harry sighed, but considering how very little he cared, it was mostly for show. He could imagine Hermione scolding him for wasting such a rare opportunity to notice the differences between education in the forties compared to their time. But that kind of cold-headed analysis was simply too much to ask when the entirety of his energy and mental strength were focused on trying to suppress the hollow scream that wanted to surface every time he opened his mouth.

Across from him, Dumbledore spent a few moments observing his peculiar twelve-handed watch – the one with planets instead of numbers – and seemed to come to the conclusion that the configuration the tiny orbiting figures were in indicated that it was time to head down, "Follow me, Harry – I mean, Mr Evans. The students have probably arrived by now,"

Oh, right, it was the first day of September today. How _convenient_ of the forces of time – or whatever it was – to have dumped him there right on the first day of the school year instead of at the start of summer holidays or something. Though, to be honest, he was actually glad for it, since there weren't a whole lot of places he preferred to be than Hogwarts.

Dumbledore lead him to the antechamber, where he proceeded to greet the forty-odd children waiting to be sorted. It was pretty much the same speech McGonagall had made in _his_ first year, explaining things like Houses and the point system.

For lack of better ideas, he remained standing in the general vicinity of the deputy headmaster, trying to be one with the wall. He might have tried to hide among the soon-to-be first-years, except they were too damn _small._ They were also staring at him with wide, confused eyes, and continued to do so for the entire duration of the Deputy Headmaster's speech. Detachedly, Harry wondered how ridiculous his argument with Malfoy must have looked from the outside, if they'd been as tiny and cute as the runts staring at him were.

After the speech, the childern followed Dumbledore excitedly, while he hung back awkwardly, trying to get over the fact that, of the roughly one thousand students in the school, not even one person knew who he was.

'Careful what you wish for', was it? How many times had he daydreamed of being as he was now, unknown by all, instead of being a celebrity? And yet, wasn't it incredibly painful all the same, if not more?

His melancholic mood persisted for the entirety of the sorting, during which he could hear everyone comment on his presence, his appereance, and his age. He was actually happy he had his back to the tables, or he didn't know how he'd have concealed his awkwardness.

Finally, Dumbledore wrapped up the sorting, and announced, "As you may have noticed, we have a new student among us this year, who is quite a bit older than the new stundents we are used to. His name is Harry Evans,"

Feeling everyone's attention shift to him, waiting for some kind of gesture, he smiled awkwardly and gave a half-hearted wave.

"For reasons that neither we nor he are at liberty to speak of, he joins us only now, for his fifth year. I hope that you'll help him acclimatise to life at Hogwarts and make him feel at home," Dumbledore then swooped the entire hall with his eyes, seemingly making eye-contanct with every single student, "In particular, I'd like to discourage questions about his background and the reason he came here so late. I cannot stress this enough – do not press too hard, or the Department of Mysteries might take some grievances with you,"

Immediately loud whispers of surprise and curiosity broke out, and everyone stared at him even harder, until Dumbledore had to clear his throat in a very pointed way to return some semblance of silence to the Great Hall.

"Now, if you will, Mr Evans, the Sorting Hat awaits you,"

Harry tried and failed to get over the surreality of the situation, and let the Deputy Headmaster drop the Hat on his head.

 _Time travelling, Harry? I hadn't taken you for the tourist type when I sorted you the first time . . ._ the familiar voice sounded in his head, and it was with surprisingly immense relief that he realized the Hat _knew_ who he was.

 _I didn't choose this – I've been kidnapped!_ he thought irritably, _by Time, or the forces of the Universe, or something_.

 _Right_ , the Hat said dubiously. Harry bristled.

 _I don't suppose you know how I can get back to my rightful place and time?_

 _I'm a_ hat _, young man_ the voice in his head pointed out gravely _, And even I know not to meddle with time._

Well, it had been a long shot.

 _Not that I could, mind you – like I said, I might be spectacularily powerful and shockingly gorgeous, but I am still, ultimately, a hat. I'm made for sorting, I simply do not underestand the concept of time, and therefore do not live under its laws._

Somewhat like Ollivander's shop, then, Harry deduced.

 _Well, then,_ the hat said cheerfully, clearly considering the case closed, _Let's get on with the sorting, shall we?_

 _Oh, just put me in Gryffindor already and let's be done with –_

"RAVENCLAW!"

"WHAT?!" Harry said very loudly, before anyone could so much as attempt to clap or cheer or react in any way to the pronouncement.

 _Well, you know. . . being a time traveller, and having to think a lot about how to deal with the circumstances and adapt to this time, I thought Ravenclaw was the most appropriate House for you . . ._

"What? But. But, courage and strong heart!"

 _Like I said, your head isn't too bad, maybe you could put it to use in a favourable environment and find the answers you seek._

Well, that was _kind_ of true, but... "But studying!" he complained, "And homework!"

 _Oh, shut up, Potter._

With those bittersweet parting words the hat was removed from his head, and an exasperated Dumbledore convinced him to take a seat at the bronze and blue table solely by the power of his eyebrows.

He settled cautiously at the only seat left, which was between a timid-looking first year and a dark-haired girl who alternated between glancing at him and giggling with her blonde friend.

After that, Headmaster Dippet gave the most boring speech in the history of speeches, probably even more boring than _Umbridge's_ , and that was not easily accomplished.

The state of things and the curious stares pretty much killed his appetite on the spot, but not wanting to attract even more attention by standing up and leaving, he busied himself with rearranging his potatoes and picking at his stew. After a few minutes of awkward silence, a first year girl sitting in front of him said, "Were you homeschooled until now? Or did you attend a different school? Are you from Durmstrang?"

Before he had any chance to answer, or to think of something vague to say, the dark-haired girl next to him intervened, in a truly condescending tone, saying, "Professor Dumbledore said not to ask question, or didn't you hear? And if it involves Unspeakables it must be something best left alone anyway,"

Then she turned to Harry, smiling, and added, "Though I don't mind a little bit of danger once in a while..."

Harry sort of gaped at her, and she answered by offering a delicate hand for him to shake.

"I'm Olive Hornby. I'm a fifth year as well, and the Ravenclaw Prefect, so I'm the person to ask if you have any question," Olive Hornby...? Hadn't he heard that name somewhere? "Really, come to me for anything, Harry – can I call you Harry? – especially if you need someone to listen – "

"Olive, stop hogging the new boy for yourself!" piped in Hornby's blonde friend, batting her eyelashes and smiling vapidly, "And introduce me already,"

"She's Felicia Fawcett," Olive said reluctantly, "But never mind her flirting, she's engaged,"

"You're engaged?" Harry repeated, surprised. Wasn't she a bit too young for that?

Fawcett looked at him like _he_ was being the weird one, but nonetheless admitted, "Yes, to Edmund Lestrange. He's a Slytherin,"

 _Lestrange_ , he thought alarmedly. The last name of Bellatrix' husband, who came from a known line of death eaters. Could this be his _mother_?

Felicia didn't seem very happy about it, and turned around to shoot a glance at, presumably, Lestrange, who was talking in low tones to the boy next to him. . . who was looking straight at _him_.

Harry felt, more than saw, the glass he had been drinking from slip from his numb fingers and crash on the floor, shattering. Someone asked what was wrong and if he was alright, but it sounded distant to his sluggish brain. The illusion of normality that the casual conversation had brought fell apart, and nothing but that handsome face and calculating gaze remained.

Harry had seen Tom Riddle's face too many times to convince himself he was seeing things. In fact, the eyes the color of dried blood currently staring at him from across the hall were almost the last thing he'd seen before being dropped here on his head . . .

"Harry? Harry!" Olive asked shaking his arm, "You're awfully pale – did the glass cut you? Here, let me vanish it,"

Not averting his gaze from Riddle, he said vaguely, "No . . . I'm. I'm alright, I just – lost my grip,"

But of course, Dumbledore had said it was 1942, so it was pretty obvious Tom Riddle should be here. How had he forgotten? He hurried to ask in the most nonchalant tone he could produce, "Who, um, who's that?"

Olive immediately brightened and started talking an octave higher than she'd been before.

"That's Tom Riddle, he's also a fifth-year, and has the best grades of our year,"

Why, _why_ was he not surprised that they _coincidentally_ were in the same year?

"He's so handsome, and kind and _smart_ . . . I wish he was in our house," sighed Fawcett with a faraway look.

Ignoring her, Olive continued, "He's also part of the Slug Club – that means the people who're regularly invited to our potions professor, Slughorn's, parties," Oh, _that_. That was here too? "Slughorn likes to gather the 'special' people in the school, the ones who either have vast connections or distinguish themselves in one or more fields, and bring them together. He invites all manners of celebrities as well, in order to give opportunities to his favourites and 'broaden their horizons',"

She smiled, visibly proud and added, "By the way, Tom always invites me, so I've attended almost all of the last few years' parties,"

When she started to gush over all the famous people she'd met the previous year and all the delicious foods she'd tasted, Harry tuned her out her spent the rest of the feast trying not to go insane from the fact that Tom Riddle – _Voldemort_ – was sitting not ten feet away from him and he couldn't do a damn thing about it.

Thankfully dinner ended soon, everyone tired and wanting to go to bed, but somehow Harry doubted there was anyone more tired than him – as if everything else wasn't enough, he was suffering from time lag, having gone nearly two days without sleeping since it had been two in the morning in his time but barely afternoon here.

The Ravenclaw tower – and didn't it feel very wrong to think he was going to sleep there – was situated at the top of a spiral staircase on the fifth floor.

The entrance had no doorknob or keyhole, or even a painting, but rather a knocker in the shape of a bronze eagle with unsettlingly black eyes. Harry knew the Universe pretty much hated him. That was old news. But he hadn't really known just _how_ _much_ until Olive explained to him and to all the first years that access to the common room was only granted to those who gave the correct answer to the riddle posed by the knocker.

Unbidden, a flashback of the Sphinx crossed his mind, and he cringed – his performance hadn't exactly been stellar. He was a man of action, not an intellectual . . . somehow, even without any kind of talent in Divination, he forsaw long hours in front of that knocker, waiting for someone who was actually suited to the house of thinkers.

Blasted Hat.

He dozed off during the customary prefect speech, somehow managing not to collapse tragically and embarrassingly on the stairs even though he was standing up.

When he opened his eyes, the knocker was saying in a surprisingly melodious tone, "Are dreams real?"

What kind question was that?!

Olive obviously didn't share Harry's confusion, for she tapped her chin pensively and said, "Well, given that reality is fractured and each shard belongs to a different person . . . I'd have to say the thinking subject can attribute however much realness to them as he wishes, but in the global reality they are irrelevant,"

"Well reasoned," the knocker voiced, and the door swung open.

All around the first years were nodding in anderstanding and whispering in admiration.

 _But that didn't answer the question at all!_ Harry could already feel the headache coming – how much could he take of this?

The common room was airy and elegant, with a raised dome covered in stars and blue silks hanging from the windows, a far cry from the Gryffindor Tower's coziness and warmth. Not to mention the fact that there were bookcases lining the circular wall and desks in, Harry felt, a rather ominous manner. Not to mention the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw in the corner, beautiful and terrifying.

Olive lead the first years to their dorms, and Harry to the fifth-year boys's dorm, where he noticed three others were preparing to go to sleep.

 _Ron, Hermione, whenever you are_ , he thought even as he was halfway asleep, _I'm a Ravenclaw, would you believe it? Dumbledore is a ginger, Slughorn has hair and Voldemort is being evil somewhere in the dungeons at this very moment_.


	3. Chapter 3

Apart from a brief moment of panic when he woke up surrounded by alien blue curtains and unknown people in nightgowns, Harry managed to wash, dress and go down to breakfast almost like a normal person.

The fact that he was surrounded by foreign faces on all sides made him tense and feeling distinctly caged. Making it worse had been having to squash the instinct that made his feet try to lead him to the Gryffindor table, and instead joining his new housemates in blue and bronze. He was secretly relieved when he caught ginger-Dumbledore's eye and received an encouraging nod, which shouldn't have made any sense – the man had quite clearly indicated that he wasn't interested in offering Harry any help or advice.

Such were his troubles that even the famed Hogwarts breakfast seemed utterly unappetizing in the face of the disaster that was somehow his life. All he managed was some half-hearted nibbling before Olive Hornby and her friend Felicia gracefully sat down in front of him with blinding smiles.

Without any sort of input on his part, Olive handed him his schedule and started comparing it to hers.

"Professor Hobart asked me to give you your schedule – he's our head of house, you know... Anyway, you take divination? I hadn't taken you for the type..."

Admittedly, Harry supposed most Ravenclaws were more interested in more preecise subjects like Arithmancy and Ancient Runes.

"Oh, we have History together today!"

After they finished breakfast, Olive and Felicia offered to show him to the History classroom, which he tried to refuse for a solid ten minutes before giving up in the face of their perseverance.

About midway there, however, someone coughed politely right behind him, making his head snap back with the irrational expectation of finding Umbridge in all of her pink, toad-like glory.

But no, of course not. She hadn't been born yet, for one. Plus, the last time he'd seen her she'd been traumatised out of her mind after her close encounter with the centaurs.

No, what he found was instead a surprisingly tall man wearing thick glasses and short-cropped hair. He was studying every inch of Harry like he'd never laid eyes on anything more fascinating in his life. His gaze lingered several seconds too long on his scar.

"Excuse me, Mr Evans," the man said shortly, "May I borrow you for a moment?"

"Good morning, Professor Hobart," Olive greeted politely, smoothly inserting herself into the converation with a smile that was the epitome of politeness, "Actually we were just going to class... we really don't want to be late..."

"Nonsense. I shall steal but a few seconds of Mr Evans' time,"

"But it's his first day, sir, won't barging in mid-class give a bad first impression?" she insisted delicately, eyes wide.

"I'll speak to Professor Binns later, in the unlikely event he minds a student ," Hobart snapped impatiently, "Now, as moving as your concern is, you and Miss Fawcett can go on ahead,"

Olive hesitated, darting a worried look at Harry.

"I'll hardly _eat_ him, Miss Hornby," the professor pointed out, a tad frustrated.

Looking somewhat doubtful, the girls reluctantly took their leave, shooting him uneasy glances as they went.

Even disregarding his two housemates' odd behavior, there was something undeniably unsettling about the Ravenclaw Head of House. Maybe it was the way he was staring at him like he wanted to dissect him – or perhaps the fact that he had yet to _blink_. Either way, Harry was noteager to talk to him.

"Come by my office after lunch," Hobart said abruptly, "You have a free period, right? I'm very interested to know how you're adjusting to life at Hogwarts so far,"

Harry blinked. "I'm – I'm alright. Is there really any need to –"

"Of course there is," he smiled, a little too wide and a little too fixed, "Didn't they tell you? I'm Elliot Hobart, Ravenclaw's Head of House... I take my duties very seriously, so simply _must_ get to know my new charge,"

Something was definitely off with the man's expression. Harry passionately did _not_ want anything to do with him. He took an involuntary step back.

"I'm afraid I'm really not allowed to say anything much, even about myself," he hedged, "Sorry, sir,"

"Come now, Mr Evans. No need to be so defensive. It's really just a little chat, I'm hardly going to press if you don't want to answer. No more than ten minutes. I won't even ask anything, we can talk about whatever you want,"

Was the creep trying to _negotiate_? "I'm sorry professor, but I'd really rather not,"

"You'd rather not?" Hobart repeated, his eyebrow raised, "Well then, it's a good thing your opinion on the matter is irrelevant. Come to my office after lunch,"

Seeing Harry's expression – filled with fury and apprehension – the professor sighed. His tone became soothing and kind, "Look, Mr Evans, there is truly nothing to be anxious about. What I'm proposing is a chance _talk,_ simply that. Nothing to be afraid of,"

Harry couldn't help the little noise of skepticism that escaped him.

"...And well, " Hobart amended, "If you were to let something _slip,_ why it'd stay right between us and nobody else would ever know, I assure you,"

"Don't count on it, sir," he muttered stiffly.

Hobart smiled ruefully, "Just as tight-lipped as Dumbledore, hmm? Well, we'll see about that. I'll see you later, then, Mr Evans. My office is in the West Tower. Right after lunch. Don't be late,"

With that, he strode away, leaving Harry unsettled and irritated in equal measure, and standing in the middle of the corridor like an idiot.

This was clearly Professor Dumbledore's fault. His brilliant idea of openly announcing his connection to the Department of Mystery as a way to get him out of answering any question _had_ worked. For about an evening. But it also had the unfortunate drawback of putting him on the radar of shady characters like Professor Elliot fucking Hobart.

Damn, he missed McGonagall already. The only ulterior motive _she'_ d have had for calling him to her office would've been feeding him biscuits.

He cursed in his head for a few minutes, a long string of curses involving Dumbledore's beard and what the old man could do with it. It made him feel only marginally better.

But this, Hobart singling him out, was a reminder. He was already sticking out like a sore thumb, what with his odd circumstances and all. But he had to put a stop to that – he really couldn't afford to draw attention. It was going to take effort, and time. A few weeks, months perhaps, but it could be done. (Not that he planned to stay here – or rather, _now –_ that long anyway, but still.)

If he managed to be utterly, staggeringly _normal_ for long enough, everyone would lose interest, and he could avoid changing the future and accidentally destroying the world. He would just. Casually fade into the background, just an unassuming, average person, nothing to see here. Once the hype and novelty was over, everyone would realize he was simply the most unremarkable person ever, and leave him alone.

He could do that.

Right? Just... be normal. Don't do anything strange. Don't break the rules – no visiting the Forbidden Forest or staying out after curfew. Don't be rude, don't get on anyone's bad side, especially any pureblood stuck-up pricks. Keep that hero-complex under control. And for fuck's sake stay away from snakes.

Yeah, simple enough.

After another few seconds of nodding to himself, he remembered a funny little fact. He was actually supposed to get to class... twelve minutes ago, according to a quick _Tempus_ spell.

He weighed his option. If he took the traditional route he'd get there in maybe ten minutes _at least._ At a half run. If the stairs were cooperative. Hogwarts was huge, admittedly. On the other hand, there _was_ this secret passage right behind the corner. A cramped little set of stairs hidden behind a tapestry of Rosmellis the Rotten, which would take him directly up three floors.

Well, it wasn't even a debate. He checked around, confirmed he was alone, and ducked behind the hideous portrait ('rotten' didn't actually refer to Rosmellis' personality, as much as to the state of his flesh), blindly making his way up the dark steps.

As expected, he got there in a couple of minutes. He emerged in an out of the way corridor, usually deserted except for the occasional ghost. Hopefully it was the same in this time too.

He'd barely taken five steps however, before he was reminded that, as he'd had abundant occasion to learn over the years, words like 'usually' and 'hopefully' didn't really apply where he was concerned.

Sure enough, in the middle of the corridor a boy built like a dresser was holding a second, much skinnier one, at wandpoint, grinning nastily.

"I've learned this new spell, you see," the bigger of the two – a Slytherin, judging by his robes – was saying with relish, "And I was just _itching_ to try it on someone . . . and there you are, Stebbins, just who I needed! Destiny, wouldn't you say?"

Stebbins, as the pimply boy seemed to be called, mumbled something Harry didn't catch, and his assailant laughed in his face.

"Don't say that – there can't possibly be something more important than helping me hone my skill, can there? Now, let's see..."

 _Seriously?_ Harry wondered, feeling sick. _This is why I don't_ do _plans._ Now what the heck was he supposed to do? Intervene and compromise his anonimacy? _Not_ intervene and compromise his self-respect and everything he stood for?

Goddammit.

He must have made some kind of noise, because the huge Slytherin stopped mid-spell and suddenly turned, saying, "What're you gawking at, dimwit?"

A clear invitation to leave without comment. Harry averted his eyes, looking at the floor instead. Took a couple of steps. Thought intensely about how this wasn't his time, and he'd be leaving as soon as he knew how.

It was none of his business. And, who knew if he'd cause some irreparable changes by helping?

Besides, what was the point of taking a shortcut if he wasted time here? He was already really late. He took a few more steps, getting away from the tableau. There, that was easy – just, walk away. Smother all of his instincts and ideals and just –

"Well Stebbins, we were saying? Ah, right, I was going to try my new spell on your ugly face. Here we go... _Pustul–_ "

"Hey!"

God _dammit_.

The large Slytherin turned again to sneer at him, wand in mid-air, spell aborted once again. "Scram, four-eyes! Can't you see we're busy here?" then he paused, frowning, "Hold on..."

He looked Harry up and down with distaste. "You're that, that _transfer_ _student_. Your mysterious circumstances are all anyone would talk about since the feast... hell, you've barely been here a day and I'm already sick of hearing your name,"

He then took a threatening step in Harry's direction, completely forgetting his earlier victim, looked massively relieved. But then... the worst possible thing happened.

"Now, now, Mulciber," a silky voice intoned, sounding calm but reproachful, "Is that any way to treat our new friend?"

"Tom...!" Mulciber said, quickly putting away his wand, "What are you – ?"

Because yes, that was indeed Tom Riddle who had just arrived, with a gleaming prefect badge on his breast.

Harry's heartbeat instantly doubled, hammering away in his ears. This could not be happening.

"I'm sure you've heard, but I'm a Prefect this year. And I would be very remiss in my duties if I let you start anything on the very first day back," the young, not-quite-yet Voldemort was saying, "Even Professor Slughorn, forgiving as he is, wouldn't let it slide if he heard you were hexing fellow students,"

Here he glanced at Stebbins – still flattened to the wall and trying to escape notice – and Harry noticed for the first time that his legs were glued together. Likely a Leg-Locker Curse, which explained why he hadn't high-tailed it out of here when he'd had the chance.

And speaking of which...

Harry darted a look behind himself. Should he?

But... no, running away now would just raise more questions. He had to play along.

Riddle's impromptu lecture ended, and Mulciber was sent away with the reinder to reflect on his actions. It didn't escape Harry's notice that there hadn't been any subtracted points or detentions given despite the blatantness of what had been going on.

Also of interest was the way Mulciber hurried down the corridor as fast as it was possible to do politely without breaking into a run. He was pretty sure he hadn't imagined the way Mulciber had paled and refused to meet the Prefect's eyes, and he didn't have to wonder long about what might have been going on between the young man who would become a Dark Lord and a boy who bore the name of one of the most well-known Death Eaters of his time.

"You should go too, Stebbins," Riddle said kindly to Mulciber's cowering victim, after performing an intricate countercurse.

Stebbins didn't need to be told twice before he disappeared behind the corner, leaving Harry in the extremely awkward position of wanting to stick his wand in Riddle's eye while lacking any legit, time-appropriate reason to do so.

Unaware of his internal struggle, Riddle smiled apologetically and said, "I'm sorry you had to see that on your first day, Evans, but I assure you, here at Hogwarts scenes like those are the exception rather than the norm,"

Heart in his throat, he squeaked, "Oh, umm,"

 _Yes, great going, Potter. How smooth._

A light frown creased Riddle's forehead, a perfect mask of concern, "Did Mulciber hex you as well? Should I take you to the hospital wing?"

"NO!" _Shit shit shit_ – "Ah, I mean... No, he didn't. Hex me, I mean. You got here just in time though, so – " say it. _Say it_ , " – T-Thank you for your help,"

Was this how Ron had felt when he'd been vomiting slugs a few years back?

"You're very welcome, Evans," Riddle beamed at him, "And I'm relieved to hear that you're alright. Oh, how rude, I never introduced myself – I'm Tom Riddle. I'm a Prefect, so should you run into any trouble _do_ feel free to come to me," he had the gall to say.

Nevermind that most of the trouble Harry had ever run in had been caused by or related to him.

A well-manicured hand was pushed under his nose. He looked at it, uncomprehendingly, for about ten seconds.

"Aren't you going to shake my hand?"

"Oh, right. Yes. Of course," he recovered gracelessly, "Pleasure meeting you, I'm Harry Evans. Though I guess you knew that,"

As soon as his fingers closed around Riddle's hand, something like a bolt of electricity shot up his arm. Similar to touching a live wire with his bare hand, he imagined. His muscles actually seized up, and he tried to snatch his arm back.

Riddle, apparently having felt the same thing, made a noise of bewilderment and alarm, and tore his hand away after several seconds of trying.

Harry tried to massage feeling back into his painfully numb forearm. He should've known better than to think one could shake hands with fucking Voldemort and remain unscathed.

Voldemort himself was gripping his hand and staring fixatedly at Harry, eyes narrowed. "What was that?" he asked dangerously.

An nervous laugh bubbled out of Harry's mouth before he could stop it. "Static? Freak accident? Magical residue, perhaps?"

"Yes, I'm sure that must be it," Riddle said very slowly, obviously unconvinced. Then he smiled, and the mask was back on, "Anyhow, Evans. I must ask – I'm rather sure Ravenclaws should be in class right now, so what exactly were you doing out here?"

"Oh, that's right! I'm late!" he exclaimed, making an exaggerated surprised expression, "I'm sorry, but I _really_ have to dash. See you around, Riddle!"

With that, he ran off.

As it turned out, he was about thirty minutes late, and never gladder that Professor Binns was the way he was and didn't really seem to notice, apart from a slow blink in his general direction. He was an actual living person in this time, but that fact didn't seem to have any impact on his behavior.

Harry noticed several familiar faces. Olive and Felicia waved at him, pointing at the seat they'd saved him, but he avoided them, taking a seat in the back. Stebbins, apparently also a Ravenclaw, was sitting near the front, furiously taking notes.

Finally, the girl next to him. Dark hair in pigtails, glasses.

It was, he realized with a start, Moaning Myrtle, in the flesh.

Trying to listen to the lesson but still too frazzled to properly focus, he nearly jumped when something began trickling in his eye, and only Myrtle's squeak of, "Blood! There's blood on your face!" kept him from panicking. Blood he could deal with – blood was normal.

He hesitantly took her proffered handkerchief and wiped the crimson rivulets away, trying to be casual about it as to avoid attracting attention... more attention, anyway.

"Thanks," he whispered grudgingly, seeing her still looking half traumatised.

He was so used to it, to the scar acting out, that the shock of realizing that his _scar was bleeding_ came with some delay. But yes, of course, he should have expected it – coming into contact with Voldemort, in any form, had always been accompanied by odd physical reactions. Professor Quirrell in particular came to mind.

But the same thing applied in the past, too? Did it mean that the connection Dumbledore was always talking about existed here as well – or rather, now as well? How was that even possible if this Voldemort – who wasn't even _Voldemort_ yet – had never tried to murder him?

He felt frustration begin to well up inside him again. It was very possible that the lessons he was having with the Headmaster of his time would have cleared that up, but op course – trust his bad luck to throw him here before Dumbledore could give him all the answers he'd promised!

Binns' droning had the fortunate effect of smothering his agitation, and after interminable minutes of pressing the handkerchief to his bleeding scar, the itching finally stopped, and by the time class ended, the shock of electricity that had left his arm numb, barely tingled anymore.

Fuck his life, though. Seriously.


	4. Chapter 4

"I do expect you to treat Divination like you would a subject like Transfiguration or Arithmency," Professor Murley said to Harry when he got to her class.

"Those who lack the Sight – which is most of us – have to rely on hard work and perseverence. _Searching_ , instead of simply Looking. Because just like everything else, the stars follow laws, tendencies, inclinations – the aim of Divination is to identify these patterns and learn to recognize them and where they lead. _That_ is how we divine the future, Mr Evans, just so we are on the same page,"

Harry had started to voice his polite assent, when Professor Murley approached his desk and proceeded to stare at him with unfocused eyes for nearly five minutes without saying a word. Before he could grow anxious that she was maybe a _real_ seer and would know all of his secrets, she clicked her tongue in an annoyed manner and walked away.

After that, there had been complex diagrams and drawings on the chalkboard and a long digression on the Threefold Law and how it applied to karmic debt, and Harry almost, _almost_ missed Trealawney's simplistic approach.

Lunch came, and to be quite honest, he could have done without it. He kept his eyes down for most of it, but he was too uncomfortable to relax even a little bit. How could he, when the the itchy feeling of someone watching him burrowed under his skin?

He was familiar with people's glances, and well, everyone was darting looks at the new student. But someone, someone was _watching._

Harry was utterly unsurprised when he glanced up and met a familiar pair of dark eyes. _Somehow_ he always seemed to end up having Tom fucking Riddle directly in his line of sight.

And wasn't that just fucking cruel. No one could have that strong a stomach that they could feel hungry while under Voldemort's scrutiny.

Not that anyone seemed to have even the slightest inkling, of course. When he wasn't dissecting Harry with his gaze, Tom was the very epitome of the charming model student. It made Harry want to retch.

It was unsettling how... normal he looked and acted. It seemed nary impossible to reconcile the charismatic Prefect with the insane, power-crazy caricature of a man that was the Voldemort of his time. Of course, according to Dumbledore's lessons, right now Riddle was still somewhat good.

...Well, _not a murderer,_ at least. Probably. He hadn't yet killed Myrtle at least, or his relatives, or even had that disturbing conversation with Slughorn...

 _Horcruxes_.

He hadn't even had the time to properly process that new morsel of knowledge he'd so painstakingly gained, before getting thrown in this godforsaken shithole of a time.

Voldemort had split his soul seven times. Perhaps starting right after the exchange he'd witnessed in the pensieve, easily charming Slughorn into revealing the actual method with which to tear his very soul into pieces... a conversation that would happen probably as soon as next year.

Watching it all happen, standing by as Voldemort was born a second time, knowing what was to come, and yet unable to do anything to stop it because of the timeline, or the balance of the universe, or whatever it was he was supposed to be careful of – could he actually do that?

Probably not. Scratch that, _definitely_ not. Hell, he hadn't been able to walk away from Stebbins and Mulciber, and he didn't even know either of them personally. But Voldemort... he knew more than he ever wanted to, especially his victims. He could never stand back and let it happen.

But, he reflected, he wouldn't _have_ to, because there was no way in hell he was staying here long enough for that. He'd be out of here and back home _way_ before Tom Riddle's descent into darkness began.

Yes, but _how?_ That was the million-dollar question, wasn't it. How to reverse with human means a situation caused by something so much bigger than one single human. It was humbling thought, and the longer Harry lingered on it, the less he understood of the entire thing.

A trip to the library was in order. Urgently.

His fork clattered against the plate as he stood and quickly left the bustling noise of the Great Hall, mostly unnoticed.

The mere prospect of _book research_ made him want to huddle in a corner and weep in misery. Hermione would no doubt have had a field day. More importantly, she'd have known where to start.

He scrambled for a viable alternative, but it wasn't as if he had anyone to ask, or even someone he could bounce ideas off of. Croaker and Dumbledore had told him in the simplest possible terms that a trip back was impossible, and were bound to try and stop him. And courtesy of Croaker's contract, he couldn't talk to anyone about it anyway.

So library it was.

"My table has been stolen," a voice said shrilly in the middle of Harry's tragic afternoon amidst dusty books.

Harry raised his eyes, which felt like sandpaper against his eyelids, and blinked. He wasn't too surprised to see Myrtle staring at him in costernation. There weren't too many people who could achieve that grating high pitch.

"Terribly sorry," he said, barely interrupting his read. There was no way he'd go somewhere else. This was the only out-of-the-way spot where he could consult books such as _The Thirteen Theories of Time,_ and _Magic, Time and How They Interact_ without rousing suspicions – or outright outing himself, since Dumbledore hadn't even bothered hiding his involvement with the Department. It saved him from having to lie consantly and keep track of his lies, and allowed him to say 'I'm not at liberty to tell' with utter impunity, but there were many drawbacks.

"But... But it was my secret spot!" she whined, "One of the few places where Olive Hornby can't bother me!"

Olive – Oh. _Oh._

Of course – Olive had been the one who'd teased Myrtle right before she'd been killed. he remembered the ghost mentioning her, back in second year, when recounting the tale of her death. How could he have not realized? Seriously, how many 'Olive's could there be?

He felt like an idiot.

"You won't tell her, right?" she squeaked, making him wince, "I saw you talking to her at breakfast – she totally has her sights on you! I know she's pretty, but please don't tell her,"

The bitter expression she was sporting didn't do much for her already lacking charm, and despite himself, Harry felt a stab of pity.

"I won't," he told her, closing his books. After hours of pointless (and for the most part incomprehensible) reading, he was just about ready to bust a vein. He stood, "And I'll even leave this place to you – I'm going back to the Common Room,"

"Oh, how kind of you – but aren't you going to Defense? It's in a few minutes, you know. Can I accompany you? You probably haven't learned the way yet,"

She followed him enthusuastically as he put the books back in their proper places, and Harry snapped, "I don't need a guide, I can find my way well enough,"

Myrtle's chin trembled and she stuttered, "How can you be so MEAN...!"

"Shut up, Myrtle! Why are you yelling?!"

"How do you know my name?" she demanded in a high-pitched squeal, "It's Olive isn't it? She told you mean things about me –"

"Quiet, both of you; we don't yell in the library," a smooth voice broke in, and Merlin's man-breasts, was this going to become a regular thing? Cause his nerves probably wouldn't stand much of it.

"Riddle!" she exclaimed, turning red. She pratically had stars in her eyes as she looked at the Prefect, and to be fair that probably was a common reaction at Hogwarts, but it only served to incense Harry even more – especially considering the boy she was drooling at was the very same one who would end up murdering her.

"Hello, Warren," Riddle nodded to the stuttering girl. "And good to see you again, Evans,"

"Yes, you too," Harry replied, sporting the fakest smile in the history of mankind.

"I'm sure you both know this, but the most important rule to uphold in the library is to avoid making noise. Even if Madam Squorr – that's our librarian – often forgets to renew her hearing spells, we should at least show some respect to our fellow students who are trying to study," Riddle pointed out with the serious expression one expected of a good, responsible Prefect.

Harry nodded, trying to look contrite, and also trying to calculate the fastest route of escape.

Then the blood froze in his veins as he noticed Riddle casually lean to one side and try to glimpse the title of the book Harry was holding. He practically smothered the incriminating tome to his chest, trying to spare it from the Prefect's scrutiny. Before he could stop himself, he snapped, "What the hell are you doing?"

Riddle, far from sheepish or apologetic, replied beatifically, "Just wondering what mysterious subject you might be researching,"

"Please wonder in a less invasive way," he ground out, still fake-smiling.

"Sorry. But being a Ravenclaw yourself, you must understand my plight. As they say, curiosity is man's greatest gift, but also his greatest downfall. Sometimes the desire to _know_ can be a powerful need onto itself, on par with hunger or thirst," he leaned forward, his face _far too close_ , "I myself can rarely resist such temptation,"

"You don't say," Harry replied placidly, taking a very big step back to an appropriate distance. "Fascinating. Well, it's been a pleasure, but I've really got to go – "

"Ah! Wait for me!" Myrtle cried, startling him. He... had forgotten she was even there. To be fair, in the haze of having to make small talk with Voldemort, he probably wouldn't notice it if the pope danced the macarena in front of him naked.

Riddle's dramatic sigh interrupted his retreat. The Prefect turned a diconsolate face to Myrtle, and commented, "I think he doesn't like me much,"

A half-hysterical bark of laughter shook him, but he was able to subdue it in a few seconds. This was getting honestly ridiculous.

Tom was obviously making a joke. The Dark Lord _. Joking._ After having very transparently pandered to Harry's – pretty much nonexistent – House-pride in Ravenclaw, and supposed love of knowledge. The young Voldemort was making an effort to gain his friendship.

 _Why._

"Noo, what are you even saying?" he exclaimed after a long, awkward pause. "How could I _possibly_ not like you?"

"Really?" Riddle smiled winningly, "Then I must insist on accompanying you to the Defense classroom,"

"What – why do you know where my next class is?"

Myrtle elbowed him painfully in the side, "Because we always have Defense with the Slytherins, silly,"

Well, wasn't that marvelous news.

"I'm afraid we've already made too much noise here. Shall we?" Riddle asked, gesturing grandly in the general direction of the door.

"S-Sure,"

They followed him out, nodding at Madam Squorr. Harry hurriedly checked out _The Thirteen Theories of Time_ and shoved it in his bag before anyone could catch a glimpse of it.

On the way to the second floor, Myrtle recovered from her earlier mutism and provided more conversation than anyone could ever need in their entire lifetime, which was a blessing, as far as Harry was concerned. It was _almost_ funny watching Riddle be forced to pretend he was absolutely fascinated with Myrtle's fourth goldfish, Baldwin, who'd died of food poisoning.

They got to the classroom with ample time to spare, and while the bespectacled girl scampered in immediately, probably eager to get a seat as far from Olive as she could, Harry was stopped before he could follow her through the door.

When he felt cold fingers close around his wrist, mindless panic overtook him, just for a few seconds.

He jumped back, wand suddenly in his hand even though he had no memory of pulling it out, and an incantation already on his lips. (It was _Sectumsempra,_ which he'd been itching to try ever since noticing it scribbled on the margin of his potions book, what felt like a lifetime ago).

That the person he found when he whirled around was Riddle did very little to remind him this was not an appropriate reaction. Especially given the way he was drinking him in, like he wanted to catch every single micro-expression that might flicker on his face.

He still hadn't let go of his wrist. And he continued not to, even after Harry's not-so-subtle attempts to snatch it back.

"This time nothing happened, hm?" Riddle murmured.

He swallowed. "What?"

"That odd phenomenon this morning. That electricity. Perhaps it truly was what you defined a 'freak accident',"

"Uh, yes, glad you agree. Could you please let go of me now?"

There was a long pause, then Tom smiled charmingly at him, "Of course, Evans,"

As soon as he had his arm back, Harry gave a tight smile, ground out, "See you later," and basically _ran_ to the first free seat he could find.

He kept his head down and tried to breathe. His hands were clammy with sweat.

Why had Riddle looked at him like that? Like he was – peculiar, somehow. They'd spoken a grand total of _twice_ , which was hardly enough to develop an interest. For that matter, wasn't it odd how often he seemed to bump into him? The young Voldemort was literally the _last_ person he wanted to see in the entire school, and he'd met him twice in half a day. Twice – in an enormous castle with more than two hundred people in it.

What were the chances of it being a coincidence?

Not very high, he had to admit.

Suddenly a shrill voice that was growing increasingly familiar interrupted his thoughts, right next to his ear, "Oh, Harry, if you wanted to sit with me you could've just asked!"

"Myrtle," he sighed.

 _Typical._

Defense was _almost_ interesting enough to distract him from the utter tragedy that was his current existence.

Galatea Merrythought had been teaching for fifty years, which was mind-blowing enough on its own, considering Harry had never known a Defense teacher who'd taught for more than a year. But there was also the fact that she'd been an adventurer in her youth, travelling the world and fighting all sorts of dark creatures and wizards. (Not that she boasted about it – Harry heard about her background from Myrtle).

Not even her deceptively decrepit appearance could hide the spark of strength in her eyes – in fact, her strong presence and a matter-of-fact attitude reminded him a little of Professor McGonagall.

When the bell rang, Myrtle insisted to escort him back to the Tower, and he didn't have the mental strength to refuse. Today had been _so_ damn long – and it was barely afternoon. Upon reaching the Common room, a hand clamped around his forearm, and wide and shining eyes looked up at him from behind a pair of thick glasses.

"Oh, by the way, I meant to ask before, but I forgot," Myrtle whispered, "You and Tom Riddle know each other?"

"No," he said immediately.

"You do!" she insisted, "You must have known each other for a while – you're so casual with him!"

"No," Harry barked, repulsed. _Casual_? There was nothing _casual_ about his loathing of Tom Riddle, thank you very much. "I don't know him, I don't like him, and I wish he were hit by a meteorite and _died_. I'm going to go take a nap,"

He shrugged her off and was about to stalk away, when she caught his sleeve.

"You know, I've heard so much speculation about you," she whispered, giving him a meaningful look, "Is it true that you're an Unspeakable agent on a secret undercover mission?"

"What?"

"And are you really secretly eight hundred years old?"

"I... _what_?" he mumbled, bewildered.

"Well, I know you can't answer," she said, winking, "You don't have to worry, your secret identity is safe with me,"

That said, Myrtle skipped towards the girls' dorm.

"Secret identity... " Harry looked at her retreating back and blinked, "... _what?_ "

After the jarring encounter in the library, Harry decided that searching for answers in such a public place where anyone could catch a glimpse of his research and easily connect the dots was not very smart of him. He continued in the privacy of the dorm, sitting on his bed with the blue curtains closed, but fell asleep almost immediately. He woke up disoriented in the middle of the night and gave it another go, only to wake up in the morning with his face mushed on a diagram of Levinsky-Rublatt's Fifth Theory of Dissonant Spaces.

Researching, he found, was a lot harder than Hermione usually made it look.

Whenever they'd had one of their yearly crises, the bushy-haired girl had always appeared to just whip out a book, skim a few pages, and immediately find all the relevant paragraphs by some kind of divinatory power.

Adding to his already abundant difficulties with academic pursuit, the subject matter was hardly easy to grasp. Hell, the author himself seemed completely baffled by the concept of Time, so Harry figured his deep confusion was rather justified.

After waking up and venturing dizzily out of bed, he was ambushed by his dorm-mates, who had evidently gotten over the 'whispering excitedly' phase and entered the 'interrogate excitedly' one instead.

Not all of them, though. While Stanley Branston and Eric Wilkes started grilling him the moment his head peeked out of the curtains, the remaining inhabitant of the fifth year dorm got dressed without speaking or looking at any of them, and then disappeared down to breakfast.

"That's Nicolas Stebbins, don't mind him, he's always like that," Branston said, perhaps mistaking his look of shocked recognition for appallment at the boy's lack of manners.

But really... it could be a coincidence but there sure were a lot of bullied people in Ravenclaw – Myrtle, Stebbins, and in his own time, Luna. _Odd_.

"So what's the deal with you?" Wilkes asked, with no regard for the fact that Harry was still half-asleep and in bad need of a shower, "Are you really an incognito eight-hundred-year-old spy for the Department of Mysteries like Warren's been saying?"

So much for her promises of secrecy. Not that it mattered, since _this_ was the kind of rumour she'd been spreading.

He face-palmed and sighed from the depth of his soul. Then he asked wryly, "What do you think?" and started to dig in his foreign new trunk for fresh clothes.

"Oh, I know you aren't," Wilkes said cheerfully, "I just wanted to see your reaction,"

Harry spared a disbelieving look for his housemate before deciding that all Ravenclaws were barmy and going back to his rummaging.

"Seriously though," Branston insisted, "Can you give us a hint? Anything's fine,"

"Here's your hint: I am _literally_ unable to tell you anything,"

Wilkes' eyes glinted, "That tells us a lot more than you probably intended, Evans,"

Harry sighed, "As long as you stop asking questions,"

He managed to shrug the two Ravenclaws off before they could drag him to breakfast with them, and slipped away to the library. He also dodged Olive and Felicia on the way out, quickly excusing himself and running off. He had no intention of making friends with anyone. He was going to disappear back home soon – establishing connections to the people here did not feature in his plans.

Besides, who knew what irreparable damages getting close to someone from the '40s could do to the chain of events that was supposed to happen. Better keep away.

Harry briefly considered skipping today's classes to continue his foray into Time theory, but ultimately decided against it. He needed anonimity – if he started missing classes left and right the professors at least would no doubt investigate, and that would be a sizeable obstacle to his plans.

It wasn't until he opened the door to the Charms classroom that he remembered several things all at once. The first was that the Charms instructor was his Head of House, Professor Hobart. The second was...

"Evans," the Professor said, obviously displeased, when he saw him enter, "I dinstinctly recall generously inviting you to my office yesterday in order to discuss anything that may trouble your young and fragile heart,"

Generously interrogate him about his involvement with the Department was probably what he'd meant.

"And yet you didn't show up. Did you have something more important than your own Head of House to attend to?"

"I – forgot, sir," he admitted tiredly.

"Well, if you won't come when invited, maybe you will when ordered," he smiled with barely concealed satisfaction, "Detention, Evans, for disrespecting my authority,"

"But –"

"Saturday, 5 pm. My office. Now go take a seat,"

Harry gaped a bit, but went to sit down without retorting. For one, he couldn't really take it to heart; it still felt like this wasn't real – maybe he'd be back _home_ before Saturday – and for two, after six years with Snape he'd learned that talking back to someone so petty only made things worse.

For all his oddness, Hobart's lesson was surprisingly normal. After giving instructions, the Professor didn't even bother to circulate the classroom and offer guidance, instead sitting down at his desk and doing his own thing.

What was less normal, was the spell they were to practise. This year's curriculum, as Harry well remembered from his own fifth year, was in good part comprised of revisions of spells from the previous years in prevision of the OWLs. Th spell they were revising today was the Levitation Charm.

 _Easy_ , thought Harry. First spell he'd ever learned. _Swish_ _and_ _flick_.

Except, no.

" _Wingardium Leviosa._ Levitation Charm. As I'm sure you'll remember – wand to sector A, one twirl eastwards, swish down to sector C point 7, drag diagonally through points 6 and 5, sharp flick on 3,"

 _Huh?_

"You can review the history of this charm on your first year textbooks, or in the intoductory chapter of the fifth year edition, on page 7," Hobart concluded, before taking a seat and disappearing behind a mountain of parchments and books.

Harry took out his wand and stared stupidly at it. He did remember, fuzzily, Hermione explaining to him and Ron how the sectors and points worked. Obviously, points of reference were needed when describing something as specifc as wand movements, but nobody _actually_ used them apart from ancient books and dry academic texts about Charm theory.

He quickly opened _Advanced Charms_ to the introductory paragraph, where a diagram illustrated the various positions: sector A indicated an area stretching from the top of one's head down to their chin, sector B, chin to chest, and sector C chest to navel.

Then things got weirder: the location of point 4 was found by stretching one's left arm out to the side, palm down and parallel to the ground, then bending the elbow at a right angle. At that point, by drawing an imaginary line, starting from the tip of the fingers, about as long as the spellcaster's wand, point 4 was finally found. Point 4, and the symmetrical point 6, could then be used to build a grid from 1 (top left corner) to 9 (bottom right corner).

Harry massaged his temple and quickly tried to calculate the right spots without being to obvious about it, all the while cursing Hobart and wizards in general, who just _had_ to make things more complicated than they ever needed to be.

When he got back, he'd be sure to appreciate Flitwick more.

And speaking of the tiny Professor – the wand movements that he'd taught them back in first year were completely different from what Hobart had just described.

Basically the instructions boiled down to: twirling his wand to the right, swishing down and to the left to about liver level, then up diagonally, and finally a flick at eye-level to the left.

A far cry from the simple swish and flick from point 4 to point 6. Why on earth was it so different? Did spells actually get modified that often? All the dates he'd had to learn last year for his OWLs had been pretty far in the past. Some spells had been exactly the same since their creation, others had laid unmodified for hundreds of years.

The Levitation charm... hadn't that been one of the questions at the exam? His answer had been – created in the 1400s, can't be used on humans, modified by some German witch in the 1700s, less movements but still can't be used on humans, and finally the version they used today, developed by Miranda Goshawk in – the 1950s. Shit.

He looked at his wand again, an even more slack-jawed stare than before. This was... it was well beyond _bad_ , it was pretty fucking tragic, to say the least. Who the hell knew which spells had survived fifty years unchanged and which, like the Levitation Charm, were almost unrecognizably different?

If he happened to use one of the latter in front of the wrong person – such as, for example, his C _harms_ _instructor_ – Croaker would probably not be pleased. He quickly went through the last few days, trying to remember if he'd cast any spell in front of anyone. He came up negative, but not a hundred percent sure about it.

He'd have to be incredibly careful from now on, and try to not do any spell he hadn't seen someone else do first.

He revised the needlessly complicated movements, then cautiously tried the Levitation Charm on his quill. It trembled, did a heal-hearted little jump, ten fell down again.

Harry's forehead _thunk_ ed as it collided with the desk.

Every time it seemed as though the situation couldn't _be_ any more awful, something like this went and happened.


	5. Chapter 5

Thursday dawned on Harry trying and failing to understand what in the blazes Aperia's First Law of Time was, and how could it help him. This, he was sure, was not simply a case of academic stupidity on his part: ' _ _Thirteen Theories of Time__ ' was far from concise and straightforward. Unarguably the best the Hogwarts library had to offer, but so incredibly convoluted that Harry had to read and re-read every sentence at least three or four times before they started to make a lick of sense, which slowed things down considerably.

The fact that many of the people cited in the book had lived in medieval times was another complication. A lot of 'giveth's and 'maketh's and confusing turns of phrase were involved when the author decided to quote them.

So far, what he understood were a few basic facts about how time worked ( _ _basic__ was definitely a misleading word to use) and a brief overview of the first thinkers who had in ancient times started to ponder about the subject.

He'd now started in on the actual theories – the first entry was the Three Laws of Time according to Aperia,an intellectual who'd lived in Imperial Greece. Each of the three laws came with a helpful little subsection titled ' _ _Time-travel__ ', which was the first bit of luck Harry had seen since coming here. The subsections were mere supposition, probably, but he still briefly felt like he'd struck gold.

Briefly, because between the author's purple prose and inconcievable metaphors and Aperia's own quotes in shabbily translated elegiac couplets, Harry's head felt like a squeezed-out lemon.

Therefore, it was after another night of deep confusion and uneasy dozing, that he finally emerged from his blue-curtained lair. He remembered to gulp down a mouthful of the bone-mending potion Madam Spleen had given him (even though his arm, though still tender and yellowish, barely twinged anymore). His back was fine, but there was some light scarring left from when he'd crashed onto Professor Dumbledore's silver contraptions. It itched.

He was not particularily hungry – hadn't been since arriving here – but he made an effort to keep to some kind of routine, or appearance thereof, so he went down to breakfast anyway. Unfortunately, the problem with routines was that he wasn't the only person to have one.

"Hey there, Evans," Wilkes greeted, physically maneuvering Harry into the seat next to his own with very little subtlety, "How're you doing on this fine morning?"

"Fine," he sighed. He looked warily at his House mate, waiting for the interrogation to start. Could he not get a _single_ peaceful morning?

"Stop making that face," Wilkes said, with a sigh of his own, seemingly reading his mind, "I promise I won't pry, I won't even ask any questions, so you can relax. Honest,"

"What?" He hardly believed his ears. Weren't Ravenclaws supposed to place a high value on information and the pursuit of knowledge (case in point, his Head of House)? A Ravenclaw not wanting to know something seemed like an oxymoron.

"I said, I won't pry. Seriously, do I look _that_ untrustworthy?"

"Yes, actually," Harry replied. It wasn't entirely true – Eric Wilkes looked _very_ normal. His face was neither ugly nor beautiful, jut... neutral; it was in fact hard to find the words to describe it, as it did not leave much of an impression. Even his sandy hair was styled in what Harry had dubbed in his head 'the 40s hair', which pretty much everyone sported. Basically: neatly parted, swept to the sides, oddly shiny.

He was, in short, as average as average could get. And _that_ was suspicious.

"Okay, look. I know Stan and I kind of pressed you yesterday, but we talked about it, and... well, I suppose thinking back to what Professor Dumbledore said, we really don't want to end up on the Unspeakables' black list," he explained nervoursly, "Especially me, since I'd like to work for the Ministry when I graduate, you know?"

For all that Harry couldn't understand somebody actually _wanting_ to work for the unholy amalgam of frustrating burocracy and hilarious incompetence that was the Ministry of Magic, Wilkes seemed sincere. Which didn't really change anything, since Harry wouldn't be telling him shit either way.

"So, uh, sorry about yesterday," he concluded, rubbing his neck.

"Okay,"

"Seriously, I'm really sorry. And... I think I didn't even introduce myself, which wow, _rude,_ right?" Wilkes offered a hand, and Harry only let him sweat for a few seconds before shaking it. "Pleasure to meet you, I'm Eric Wilkes. Call me Eric, please,"

Grumpily, he replied, "I guess you can call me Harry too,"

Wilkes – or Eric, rather, immediately relaxed and none-too-gently elbowed the person half-asleep next to him.

"You too, Stan, introduce yourself properly," he instructed. Branston – Harry hadn't noticed him – managed to keep his eyes open for the ten seconds it took him to say his name and shake hands, then fell asleep again, face mashed in his sponge cake.

"He's not a morning person," Eric told him.

In the end, breakfast was actually a rather peaceful affair. True to their word, neither of his House mates pressed him for answers ( _for now)_ and he simply listened to them chatter on about their summer holidays and whatnot. He made the mistake of relaxing in the relative normalcy for a second – _one_ second – and that was apparently enough for things to get weird again.

There was the sudden sound of wind rushing in his ears, and a wave of ice inside him, and he shuddered as a misty shape 'whoosh'ed _through_ him. It took him a few seconds to recognize the Gray Lady's face, staring translucently at him from above a plate of croissants.

The sudden silence testified to the death of every conversation in the vicinity, and he found himself half-heartedly wishing, _Please don't say anything weird,_ even without holding out any real hopes. The ghost had sharp, angular features, more proud than pretty, and there was a look of wild intensity in her eyes. Somehow, he was pretty sure this was not going to be a casual conversation.

He put down his butterknife, and tried to prepare himself.

"You are... not of here," she said, very slowly, obviously aware that she had to measure her words. Her voice was low, faint, yet oddly forceful. "You are one of _them._ Have you," she made an aborted motion, as if to grab his arm, _"Have you seen_ her? _"_

 _Not of here,_ meaning he was from another time. But, "Her?"

"My mother," she said thinly, "Have you met with her?"

"Your mother," he repeated stupidly. "Your _mother._ I – is she a ghost as well? Why would I –"

Her face spasmed slightly in frustration, and she disappeared, sinking down through the table with an irritated noise that echoed for a couple of seconds. Harry blinked a few times, waiting for something to click in his brain, but to no avail.

"Well, that was weird," he muttered finally, shaking his head and going back to eating when the chatter started back up. He noticed Eric and Stan staring at him, speechless.

"What,"

"Well... it's rare to see the Grey Lady interact with anyone," Stan said slowly, "She'll help you if you ask for directions, but I've never seen her actually talk to somebody. That was the first time I've even heard her speak at all, in fact,"

Great. Another weird thing to add to the collection. As was quickly becoming reflex, he glanced at the staff table to check how Professor Hobart was taking this development, only to find the man bent over a length of parchment, furiously taking notes.

 _Merlin's sake._

The author's usual propensity for pages-long sentences and pointlessly complicating simple matters had rendered Aperia's First Law a much more difficult concept to grasp than it actually was. Simply put, the theory postulated that time moved in cycles, infinitely repeating in a pattern of action and reaction. And in these cycles the inquisitive mind could see the hands of the gods and the messages they left – pain, violence, suffering, for eternity.

At leas that was the conclusion Harry had come to after a solid hour of painful reflection.

"Most of you should be adding those lovage seeds right now," Slughorn informed them cheerfully, peering into Stan's cauldron and coming away coughing. "Remember, those who fail to produce an acceptable result will be assigned an additional five feet on the Confusing Concoction,"

Lovage seeds? Wasn't that the first ingredient? He'd automatically put them in before even starting, since Snape had always ragged on him for forgetting. He checked the recipe again, and... yes, lovage seeds did appear to be the second to last ingredient. _Of course_ the recipe was different.

...Ah, well. It probably didn't make that much of a difference, right? And anyway, he had bigger fish to fry than worrying about getting good marks. Such as, for instance trying to get back home where he belonged. So, back to Aperia's Law.

The paragraph dedicated to the application of said law to time-travel, which was the relevant part, was kind of vague. It was basically a question of recreating the same incident, circumstance, or ritual that had caused the instance of time travel in the first place, and hope that it did it again, but in reverse. It seemed all very wishy washy (just _hope?_ ) but at the same time it seemed stupid skipping it in favor of the more complicated stuff. He'd try anyway, and if it didn't work he'd proceed with the Second Law, which seemed a tad more difficult (full moon and dead animals kind of difficult).

Repeating the incident that had brought him here... since he'd been time-napped while watching a memory of Slughorn's in Professor Dumbledore's pensieve... yeah, easy. _Right_.

He stirred twice, anti-clockwise, and watched in mild apprehension as the liquid started to boil furiously. That wasn't supposed to happen. It... looked like it was about to explode. Fuck. He had a sudden flashback of being in a similar situation a few months ago, and reading something scribbled on the margin of his potions book. Something like, ' _essence of moonstone: to pacify an over-boiling concoction_ '.

Or something. It _could_ have been essence of mugwort. ...Ah, well.

He hurried to the ingredients cabinet and snatched one of the many tiny vials labelled 'Essence of Moonstone'. Was one vial even enough? Or too much? His Confusing Concoction was starting to make a sound like an angry cat, so he emptied the vial and hoped for the best. As soon as the blue-ish liquid seeped into the thick purple mess, the noise subsided and the potion no longer looked to be about to blow up.

Merlin, how he missed the Half-Blood Prince.

"Should be time to add the sneezewort leaves, now," Slughorn called from the other side of the dungeon, near the Slytherins, "At this stage the color should be approaching a light pink – or, like Tom's, a deep red. My, but you've out-done yourself today, young man! Dandelion root for increased efficacy? And – this velvety quality, is it – ah, powdered puffer-fish, of course – quite clever, quite clever..."

"Oh, not at all," Riddle demurred with a pleased little smile, "I simply remembered from last year, sir, when we covered modifying factors in potions,"

"I only mentioned the dandelion root in passing," Slughorn observed, visibly delighted, "And you remembered? But what about the powdered puffer-fish, that's hardly something you'd find in a textbook. . . "

He blinked innocently, "I'm sure it must be there, sir. Perhaps in a footnote,"

This elicited a chuckle from the Potions Professor, whose robe's golden buttons trembled with the movement of his considerable belly. "I suppose it's my fault for subjecting someone of your abilities and knowledge to a third-year potion. But I'm afraid you'll have to bear with it for a little while, since this is OWLs year and all,"

"Of course, sir,"

"But in the meanwhile, three points to Slytherin," with another hearty chuckle, Slughorn moved on to the Ravenclaws, nodding here and there and giving a deep, tired sigh when he saw Myrtle's bright yellow, cement-like creation. However, Harry only saw that out of the corner of his eye, because Riddle had suddenly made eye contact and... smirked.

Not a nasty smirk. Disquieting, yes, but not for the normal reasons – it was a _fake_ smirk; playful, good-natured, everything Riddle was _not_. He looked to be... preening, almost, from the Professor's praise. And somehow he was looking at him like... Wait, was he... there was no way on earth he could be... was he _showing off?_ To _Harry?_

 _Dear, sweet Merlin._ What the actual fuck.

He felt his face do something, and had the strong suspicion it was a) not very nice and b) not what Riddle was expecting, judging by his tiny, puzzled frown. It occurred to Harry that a normal reaction might have been admiration, awe at Tom's brilliance, amusement even, at the way he had Slughorn eating out of his hand. But –

Yeah, no.

"Harry," came a whisper from Eric, who sat next to him, "I think that's enough leaves...?"

"Ah, shit," it was enough leaves _half a jar_ ago. He tried to take some of them out, but they'd already dissolved. It probably wouldn't blow up... right... ?

"Mr Evans, how are things proceeding?" Slughorn asked, suddenly peering into his cauldron, "Hmm? What an odd color, how did you get to this shade of purple?"

Sweating altogether too much, he admitted, "I may have added too much sneezewort, sir,"

"Yes, that is quite clear... this potion would have some very intense side-effects..." Slughorn informed him distractedly, "The color's a bit off, but both the smell and consistency are fine. Did you add something? Or substitute the persimmon with – Hmm?" He sniffed the fumes above the cauldron, made a noise of recognition and then chuckled knowingly, "Moonstone essence? Were you about to have a little accident, Mr Evans?"

"Um,"

It was probably the first time in six years of schoolingthat Harry actually got annoyed at a Professor for being _too_ competent. What kind of supernatural sense of smell did Slughorn have, to be able to detect what amounted to a spoonful of substance that, to be honest, didn't really smell like anything?

"Quite fine, my boy, quite fine," Slughorn assured him with a wink, "Since it _didn't_ explode. But you'll have to write that essay, though I'm sure two feet'll be enough," Shooting him one last intrigued look, Slughorn tottered away to sniff someone else's potion.

Ahh, whatever.

More imortantly. Recreating the circumstances of his tumble into the past – how difficult could that be? Getting a memory from Slughorn somehow, then convincing Dumbledore to lend him his pensieve... it wasn't impossible. Just _really_ unlikely. And there were a few gray areas, such as: did it have to be the same memory? That one awful conversation about candied pineapples and horcruxes that would happen one year from now? And did Dumbledore have to dive in the pensieve with him like he had last time? And for that matter, did the Deputy Headmaster even _have_ that specific pensieve yet? And would Dippet let them use the Headmaster's office?

And finally, would it even work?

'A few gray areas'. _Right_.

"Hey Harry," Olive greeted, suddenly appearing out of thin air like a perfectly cast conjuring charm, "We were wondering, would you like to study with us?"

Harry, in the middle of hurrying towards the Tower for another go at ' _Thirteen Theories_ ', turned a blank look on her, "Studying?"

She was holding the Charms textbook to her chest, apparently too thick to fit inside her bag. Next to her, Felicia smiled wanly and waved her hand.

"Yes, there's a study group – we meet in the library, and revise a different subject every day. I thought you might need the assistance, being new and all. How about it?"

Studying after an entire day of classes seemed like the worst idea in the history of ever, especially studying something as pointless as school subjects, as opposed to researching ways to go back home. And buddying up with these people was _so_ not in his plans, no matter how nice they were.

"I – uh, I don't think – "

"It's not just us two Ravenclaws, either, there are a few Hufflepuffs and a couple of Slytherins as well, and we're really well-rounded – "

Harry started to edge away with an apologetic expression, "I'm a bit busy right now,"

She frowned at him, "Then tomorrow?"

"I'm really sorry..."

Her frown deepened as he shot another fake-regretful look at her over his shoulder before doing the polite version of a sprint towards the Tower. He heard Felicia mutter, "Why's he _avoiding_ us?" before turning the corner, and it made him feel awful. They were being so nice and friendly... but he couldn't afford to waste his time or form attachments: he was going to be gone soon.

As soon as he somehow managed to get a memory from Slughorn. Which, yeah, _fat chance._ Maybe Dumbledore had one.

As soon as the stairscase came into sight, there was a loud squeal as something flung itself in his direction. Out of pure reflex, he dodged out of the way, and Myrtle Warren almost collided with the wall.

"Mean!" she declared, before a look of cheerful satisfaction stole over her features, "Oh, right! I just heard Olive complain that you refused to join her study group – so I wanted to say, good on you; that harpy has so many people in her circle already – and don't worry, it's not like you're missing much. It just gossip, I'm sure of that. Probably _mean_ gossip as well. It's a really pointless group, anyway, and you're better off not having joined it,"

Harry nodded slowly, "So... you really want to join, huh?"

" _No,"_ she said loudly, crossing her arms. He raised an eyebrow, and she relented. "Alright, _kind of_. It's just... I suck at everything, except Care of Magical Creatures,"

"Hey, don't look at me, I suck at everything too," he warned her. The pleading look slid off her face, and she sighed, disconsolated, as they climbed the spiral staircase.

They stopped underneath the eagle knocker, gleaming in the afternoon sun, and Myrtle reached a hand to knock it once.

"If a wizard says 'All wizards are liars', is he telling the truth?"

 _Huh?_

"Well... if he's telling the truth, then he's a liar, because he said all wizards are liars and he's a wizard," she adjusted her glasses, "But if he's lying then he's...well, he's then telling the truth? Urgh, my _head._ I suppose he's a liar either way, so he's telling the truth,"

"Excellent reasoning," the knocker praised as the door swung open. Harry looked at her, feeling... oh dear Merlin... was it actual admiration? For _Moaning Myrtle?_ He hadn't realized until that moment just how fast his life was spiralling away from his control.

"Well, see?" he said dryly, "At least you can get in the bloody common room when you want. Do you know how many times I've had to wait there like an idiot with a bunch of drooling first years for company?"

And on one memorable occasion, he'd had the humiliating honor to witness one of those first years answer the damn riddle to the knocker's satisfaction. Life in Ravenclaw was too harsh for his brain. He missed the days of simply uttering a password to be granted passage.

He excused himself (re: _ran away_ ) from Myrtle, and was already trying to think of a way to approach Professor Dumbledore with his request without sounding desperate and/or barmy, when someone said, "There you are, Evans!"

A boy – probably a seventh-year – jumped up from the blue couch where he'd been lounging and held out a letter. "Professor Dumbledore told me to give you this,"

"Thanks," Harry said reflexively, taking it. It was heavy parchment, sealed with a blot of red wax. For a silly moment he thought he was being summoned for a lesson, to watch another memory and hear more about Voldemort's life. But of course, what need was there for lessons and other people's memories when the real thing skulked Hogwarts' very own halls?

Still, it couldn't be anything bad, right?

He retreated to the privacy of the dorms and ripped it open with slight trepidation. _Mr Evans,_ it said, _I've received a visit from the Head of the Department of Mysteries, Croaker, and he has given me a few things to pass along to you. They're rather inconsequential things, to be sure, but I'd rather give them to you in person. I'd like to hear how your first few days here have gone, and how you're holding up. I trust you know where my office is_ (Harry's arm twinged at the reminder) _and I'd be glad if you could spare the time to join me there at five this afternoon for a spot of tea and some lemon squares._

 _A. D._

Harry looked at it. Read it again. Stared at empty space for a few seconds. Then _hurled it at the wall._

Anger jolted through him like lightning as he thought over the words, hands fisted and heart pounding. Dumbledore wanted to check up on him. He wanted to ask how the first week had gone, how he was adjusting. Despite... His jaw clenched. He had the gall to – after washing his hands of Harry's problems – and _now_ he decided to be sympathetic – wanted to hear how he was _holding_ _up_ – wanted to talk about his _fucking_ _feelings_ – pretend he _cared_ –

 _Breathe,_ he thought. It took him a while to calm down, though, and minutes passed with him just standing in the middle of the dormroom, trying to empty his mind like Snape had never managed to teach him. He had his wand in a death-grip, and didn't even remember when he'd pulled it out. He quickly put it away.

Then, he remembered something important.

Hadn't he been trying to find a way to approach Dumbledore not five minutes ago? This... this was actually a very lucky thing. It was a chance, at least, to try and convince the man to help him reproduce the events that had led up to his time travel. He wanted to pretend to be helpful, now, so maybe he'd accept out of pity, or something. It didn't matter, as long as he accepted.

He kneeled down to retrieve the balled up parchment and smoothed it out.

Even if Dumbledore lent him his help, it was likely the attempt would be pointless. It would probably be pointless... but it was an attempt. Miles better than passively rotting away in this hellhole.

And there _was_ a chance it'd work, however small.


	6. Chapter 6

The Deputy Headmaster's office looked slightly different than he recalled. Not that he remembered much; a glimpse of thick-spined tomes, a flash of warm brown curtains, the sharp and painful dig of pointy instruments in his back and in the underside of his arm. Now that he wasn't in the thick of shock and confusion anymore, he noticed other things.

The archaic version of a telescope was positioned on a little wooden table, pointing up towards the window as if it had been used recently. Next to it, several rolls of parchment covered in tiny, spidery script had been haphazardly left to dry. Towards the center of the room was Fawkes' perch, empty but for a couple of orange feathers. On the left-hand side, another brown curtain covered the wall despite the fact that Harry was pretty sure there hadn't been a window there.

It was, all in all, very different from when it had been (would become) Professor McGonagall's domain.

"Would you prefer green or black tea?" Professor Dumbledore asked, apparently unbothered by they way Harry was rudely exploring his office and inspecting his things. Gathering the nerve to sit still and look him in the eye was proving more difficult than anticipated.

The old wizard looked all wrong with his hair and beard so violently different than the white candor of the future, and especially wrong in this warm-hued room that was too small and where no former Headmaster snored or gave unsolicited commentary from the wall.

"Or there are other herbal teas, if you like. Mint, germander or mallowsweet. All quite tasty and, I hear, good for the soul. Our own Professor Beery grows them in greenhouse four,"

"Black tea is fine, sir," he said, finally sinking in the soft chair facing the desk.

Dumbledore took his time, slowly setting the down saucers and teacups and a tray of biscuits. Then his wand tapped the teapot twice, and tendrils of smoke instantly started to curl up from the spout. Only after the water was poured and everything was ready did he finally speak.

"You look," he began cautiously, "Quite stressed. I suppose it's to be expected of someone in your predicament. But still, sleeping and eating with some regularity would be advisable,"

"It _would_ be advisable, wouldn't it?" Harry said, trying to be calm and failing, "I look stressed? Well, if you fucking helped me go home, maybe I wouldn't. Why don't _you_ try waking up – "

Midsentence, his throat just closed up. A spasm of muscles around his words, stopping him from speaking. He tried again, but the sounds were choked from him and his lips, slightly parted, were not moving. A moment of panic overtook him as he tried and tried again to finish the damn sentence, but couldn't speak, couldn't _breathe_.

Black spots began to dance in his eyes, and he suddenly realized Dumbledore's hands were on his shoulders, and his red beard was in Harry's face – he was shaking him, shouting something.

"Harry, stop trying to say it – it is the contract, the contract Unspeakable Croaker made you sign is stopping you – "

And... yes, that made sense.

 _Why don't you try waking up fifty years in the fucking past, let's see how_ you _deal with it._

As soon as he stopped trying to say the incriminating sentence his throat relaxed and he could breathe normally. Fucking hell. He'd forgotten he wasn't supposed to speak freely about things pertaining to his time-related incident. One more thing to add to the ever-expanding list of things that were going to drive him to premature stress-related baldness.

"Are you alright?"

"Yes," he said, clearing his throat and resenting the genuine concern in the Deputy Headmaster face. "I – whatever. You called me here for something to do with the Department of Mysteries, sir?"

Dumbledore watched him for a long moment, his bright blue eyes piercing through him in a heavy scrutiny. They seemed... less bright, somehow, than they were in Harry's own time. More troubled.

A sigh, then a bony hand disappeared inside the first drawer of the desk, retrieving a series of packages from it. One by one, Dumbledore placed them onto the oaken surface between them, barely fitting them into the small space that wasn't already cluttered by metallic contraptions and strange artifacts.

"The Department saw fit to provide you with a number of items that you might find of some use," he said carefully. He held up an envelope, separated from the other objects. "This one, I will keep. It is, as you can see, a permission slip for Hogsmeade. The signature is the same that was used during your enrollment, so it'll hold up to any eventual scrutiny. Well, I wouldn't expect anything less from them. I'll give it to Professor Dippet first thing in the morning,"

He slipped the envelope back into the drawer and went on to the next item: a brown leather pouch held closed by a string. Harry opened it, and his fingernails clinked against metal.

"Money?" he asked, frowning.

"Yes, that is your allowance. The Department will provide for you until the end of your studies, or as soon as you are able to do it yourself. You will receive this amount every month for clothing and other personal expenses,"

A jar was next, which upon uncorking was discovered to be filled with Floo powder. "To contact the Department in case of emergency," Dumbledore explained. Another package was revealed to be a pile of new textbooks – Harry had been using old copies from the library – and the standard potions kit. Then a warm wooly scarf in the Ravenclaw colors, with, apparently, Croaker's congratulations on his placement there.

Then, a broomstick.

"I shrunk it for practical reasons, as you can imagine. It's a Tinderblast, a fairly recent release from Ellerby and Spudmore. Easy to direct, I'm told, and quite resilient," there was a long pause in which Harry continued to stare blankly at the miniaturized broom.

"They hope it'll help with stress management," Dumbledore admitted eventually. Then, somewhat guiltily, "The same reason why they got you this set of Gobblestones, as well as these novels,"

A pile of volumes with a catchy yellow title – _'Wizard Detective Chronicles'_ – was deposited on the edge of the desk, along with the Gobblestones box.

Harry continued to stare, speechless. He blinked a few times, but the picture didn't change. He honestly could not find the words to express the depth of his feelings of _what the fuck._

The tableau was bizarre. A scarf in his ( _not his_ ) House colors? Gobblestones, novels? _A broomstick_?

"What the hell is wrong with you people," he said flatly. Waving an all-encompassing hand around the various objects in front of him, he said very slowly,"I don't need this. I don't need _any_ of this,"

A compassionate frown, "Harry, I am aware –"

"What I _need_ , in case I haven't managed to make it entirely fucking clear, is _a way home._ Not. Scarves. Or boardgames,"

"I _am_ aware of your opinion on this, but they are merely trying to make your time here more comfortable, or enjoyable, even – this is not meant to offend you, rather, it's an attempt at consideration – "

"They can wipe their _asses_ with consideration," he shouted, jumping out of the comfortable seat. "If they gave a shit about me they'd be trying to send me back, not giving me... _platitudes_ and briberies!"

"Harry, you've been told the situation," once again, the shadowed blue stare, sorrowful, "There is nothing they can do for you as of yet, and not for lack of effort,"

"I don't believe that – there must be a way – "

"I'm afraid there is truly nothing they can do," he sounded so sure. Not like he _believed_ it, but like he _knew_ it. He spoke softly, "Platitudes and bribery are all that's possible, Harry. You have to forgive them,"

" _How?!"_ his voice cracked in the middle, and he closed his eyes, trying to make the lump in his throat disappear. They were telling him, once again, that he was stuck here for the rest of his miserable life. Nothing new, and yet... A sudden image of Ron and Hermione – would he ever see them again? – floated in his mind of its own accord, but he shoved it forcefully away. He _would_ see them again.

"And you, it's not like you're any better than them yourself!" he spat out, "Pretending you give a damn, then leaving me to rot as you please. Isn't that unprofessional? I _am_ your student, technically, don't you have a responsibility? Or what, you're having fun watching me blindly hit my head against every possible wall?"

Dumbledore looked like he'd been slapped. "No, I – that isn't what – of course I care about you, Harry, how could you even say – "

"Then _help!_ "

"I – you don't understand, it isn't as simple as helping you or 'leaving you to rot', as you put it," his face looked very white. "Believe me, please, if I could, if it were at all possible, I wouldn't hesitate to aid you – but there is much at stake that goes beyond the question of caring or not, and I truly _cannot_ be a part of this,"

Harry had known, of course.

It still made him angry.

Gently, he wondered, "Does the idea of interfering with time frighten you? Is that it? I understand, I really do. See, for me it's not just an idea – it's _reality_ , and I have to live in it,"

Dumbledore looked terrible, trembling and pale, and seeing him so affected was _galling._ The old man was overreacting – after all, _he_ was not the one in a situation that called for that kind of hollow-eyed despair. Still, a part of Harry (the part that wasn't busy with all of the unprocessable emotions that this interaction was causing), noted that he was _almost there._ Just a bit more –

"You pretend to care, to be so _righteous_ and _moral_ all the time, but when it comes to actually doing things, suddenly you can't? Do you think it's _right_ for you to ignore someone who's suffering, just because it'd make you feel a little uncomfortable? Just because it's _easier_?"

The other wizard finched once, as thought he'd been physically hit. "Harry – of course I care, but it isn't as simple as – you know, don't you, that I _would_ help... I _will_ help, if there truly is something I can do, as long as won't interfere directly with –"

Suddenly, he stopped. The blue eyes studied Harry's face, and something must have shown there, because he sighed, paler than ever, and said quietly, "Very well. I see you already have something in mind. What is it?"

Harry stared at him for a moment, then rooted around his book bag and took out _Thirteen Theories of Time._ He opened it at the correct page and placed it on top of the shrunken broom, upside down so Dumbledore could read it. Wordlessly, the other wizard lowered his head to read the page – not before turning a his gaze on Harry, heavy with something he couldn't identify.

Well... not that it mattered.

They stayed like that for a bit, with only the rustle of pages turning to mark the time. Harry realized he was still standing stupidly, and sat back down. Under his flat gaze, Dumbledore read quickly, and seemed to understand all of it immediately. It shouldn't have been surprising – it was as one would expect of a scholar like him. His frown was also getting deeper, which was possibly even less surprising.

After a small eternity, he finally stood, the stars on his lilac robe glowing faintly.

"Reproduce the exact circumstances of the accident," he said, "It would entail, I presume, that we plunge together into a memory. Have you thought of how to go about acquiring it?"

Harry admitted,"I thought you might have one, sir. Since you've known professor Slughorn for years,"

"I have known Horace for a number of years, yes, and as a matter of fact I _am_ currently in possession of a few of his memories. A Quidditch game and a few amusing potion-related accidents," he looked over his half-moon glasses and added, "But I think – probably the content of the memory is more important than the provenance, wouldn't you say?"

"Which means – my own memory of it?" A memory of a memory. Clever. "But I don't know how to pull it out of my head,"

"Indeed, you'd normally need to be quite a proficent Occlumens to do such a thing... or have another Occlumens do it for you," Dumbledore said, with a vague shadow of humor, "And you're in luck in that regard. I happen to be rather skilled in the Mind Arts. I can extract the memory for you, provided you think very, very intensely about it,"

"What, right now?"

Dumbledore nodded, and slowly circled the desk. He pulled out his wand – different, for some reason, than the long white one he used to have in the future – and approached him cautiously, avoiding brusque movements, much like he might a wild animal.

"Think about that memory, every detail about it, the emotions you were feeling, the thoughts you were having, the shapes, the colors..."

Harry tried to focus on it, ignoring the movement of the stick near his temple, drawing circles and shapes in a slow pattern. Recalling the scene was not hard – it was likely seared in his brain forever. The moment he'd lost everything to be thrown here. Effectively, it was Harry Potter's last memory, before he'd become this other confused, lost, misplaced version of himself.

He thought about the conversation Slughorn and Riddle had been having about Horcruxes, and the chill that had gone down his spine when hearing them discuss the possibility of _seven_ of them. He tried not to think – for the millionth time – that Tom Riddle was in the castle right now, alive and well and probably planning something nefarious.

As he focused on the details of the memory, he noticed Dumbledore frowning and starting to chant something, as if having difficulties with the task. He was starting to get worried – but then, there it was: a thin strand of silvery thought, straight out of his temple. It flowed slowly, and there were a few beads of sweat on Dumbledore's brow. Was it supposed to be this hard?

When all of the swirling substance had been deposited in a tiny glass bottle, and Dumbledore started to move towards his own cupboard, Harry stopped him.

"Ah, this isn't... I mean, not here,"

A frown. "You said I was in my office. Some of the first few words you said to me in fact,"

"Yes, but your office – " _was the Headmaster's office._ He choked briefly, caught by surprise again, and coughed for a few moments massaging his throat. Was he not supposed to reveal Dumbeldore's more than obvious promotion? It was surely not that much of a plot twist.

Maybe he could just de-contextualize it. "Let's go to the – " _Headmaster's office._

This was getting old fast. He motioned for Dumbledore to follow him, and started in the direction of the stairs, but his feet stopped him almost as soon as he took the first step, frozen stiff like cement. What. The. _Hell_.

He thought about the portrait of Elda the Emeritus, which was next to the office, and tried to trick the contract into letting him go there, but again his legs seized up and he was left standing stupidly mid-step, half-turned towards the door.

Dumbledore was looking at him strangely. "Am I to understand that... we shouldn't do it here?"

"You'll – " _be Headmaster in a few years. "_ Professor – _" Dippet will retire._ "You'll get –" _a promotion._ Fucking hell.

Writing wouldn't work either, he remembered Croaker mentioning it. Which left him with... vague statements and a prayer.

"Old age is quite hard to manage," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"Life is just miserable. You work, you grow old... then you die, leaving it up to those following you to keep things going,"

Dumbledore continued to blink slowly, visibly puzzled by his words.

"Nobody lives forever. Old age. Makes you quite useless, doesn't it?" Don't think about Slughorn, don't think about Slughorn, "Most people enjoy some free time after a certain age. Hobbys like gardening and such. And then someone else has to – "

The contract put a stop to it, but it was already too late. He could see it clickin Dumbledore's brain. Old age, retirement, successors...

"I became Headmaster," he said, taken aback, "Or rather, will become, after Professor Dippet retires,"

It was a pretty given development – Dumbledore was already doing most of the work anyway, and it didn't take a genius to know that someday that ' _Deputy'_ would drop from his title. Still, he bore with the long moment of quiet and tragic awareness (or whatever) that overtook the Transfiguration Professor.

When it was done, Harry sighed in relief and followed the lilac-clothed wizard down the corridor and to the moving stairs. He made a mental note of the fact that now that the cat was out of the bag, the contract let him walk freely. He'd have to think about that later.

The trip was short and quiet. By an unspoken agreement they avoided the main corridors, though that wasn't really necessary, since there was almost no one scurrying in the castle at this time. Everyone sensible was in the Great Hall, having dinner like normal people, not forcing their non-Headmaster to help them attempt a coup against the very fabric of time and space.

The gargoyles jumped aside without fanfare at the unhesitant utterance of the password, which to the surprise of no one, Dumbledore knew. He also had a key to the office door, one of those big brass ones that Harry had only seen in old cartoons. His eyebrows rose.

"Professor Dippet is often absent from Hogwarts, for health-related reasons," Dumbledore said, a bit defensively, cementing the fact that it was in fact he who actually ran the school.

"Right,"

An unexpected wave of emotion hit him when he entered the circular room. He'd been here so often in the past five and a half years, he knew every nook and cranny of it like he knew the palm of his hand. In this time it was a completely different landscape. His eyes warred with his brain, and he stopped stupidly in the middle of the room, overwhelmed by _how_ jarringlywrong everything looked.

Meanwhile, Dumbledore (who _hadn't_ been gripped by a sudden fit of anguished nostalgia) had moved to the cupboard behind the desk, uttered a few spells and passwords, and come back with the big stone bowl firmly held in his hands. It looked just as Harry remembered, with those same rune-like markings around the rim.

He didn't, like Harry had expected, immediately pour the memory in the pensieve. He disappeard once again behind the desk, and emerged with an armful of oddities. Candles, mainly.

Harry blinked. "Sir? What... are you doing?"

Professor Dumbledore began to position a cluster of candles in four completely arbitrary points at the edges of the room. "I am delimiting the boundaries of what is called a ritual space, Harry. It was expressely requested in the instructions,"

"...It was?"

"You may have not noticed because most of the actual directives are buried in purple prose and metaphors," Dumbledore informed him, the slightest hint of a twinkle in his eye. As he spoke, he waved his incongruent wand in the middle of the floor, coaxing a piece of chalk into delineating two sharp symbols.

"I missed that too?" he asked, feeling stupid.

"Through no fault of your own. Nobody would notice, outside of those who devote themselves to the study of ritual magic. With practice, you start seeing the patterns. When it says, 'filled with will of travel and yearning for places well-known and lost', that's an instruction to draw symbols for 'travel' and 'home'. In our cases, the runes _raidho_ and _ingwaz_ ,"

"But what if the someone's circumstances to repeat weren't as stationary as mine? Like, falling off a plane, or something,"

His eyes widened for a moment. _Shit, did airplanes exist yet?_ He studied Dumbledore for reactions, but the man was simply pointing his wand at each cluster of candles, lighting them in some specific order. He didn't seem confused or shocked, which probably meant airplanes were normal.

"There are ways to overcome that particular obstacle. For example, demarcating one's self as the ritual space. Now, let us begin,"

He lit the last candle, and suddenly the very air changed. It was suddenly charged, heavy, rich with some energy that danced in their bones. Breathing was at once harder and headier.

While he'd been distracted by the peculiar sensation, he saw the pensieve was ready. Harry's memory of Slughorn's memory looked a lot prettier than its content was. The substance, halfway between liquid and gaseous, swirled in lazy patterns around the basin, shining ever so slightly when the light hit it in a certain way.

Dumbledore gestured in an _'after you'_ sort of way, and taking a deep breath, as if he were about to dive in actual water, Harry plunged his head into the silvery liquid.

Immediately, the sensation of falling down an interminable distance gripped his senses, but then he was landing, his feet sliding peculiarly as if he were trudging through... sand...

The image lasted only a moment, the same image that had haunted his dreams for the last week: an infinite desert, dunes stretching as far as the eye could see, an ocean of sand, perfectly still. As he'd once described it to Croaker that first day, the sky looked flat and gray like a slab of stone. And in that starless, cloudless vastness, the sun did the exact opposite of shining, instead hovering far away near the line of the horizon and appearing to cast shadows on its surroundings.

After only a few seconds, the image disappeared as though it had never been, immediately getting replaced by the by-now-familiar setting of the memory. The couches, the armchair, the pictures on the wall. Something was still odd though.

He looked to be standing normally, but if he touched the carpet-covered floor with his foot, instead of hard surface, the tip of his foot felt like it was sliding, sinking in sand.

Harry saw Dumbledore land next to him in a composed manner, and could tell the composedness was only a facade – he was obviously very tense, especially after noticing who the actors were.

"You said... if I recall, this memory is from 1943? Is it possible that it is of quite sensitive nature?"

His face must have shown it was, because Dumbledore seemed to somehow _droop_ worriedly _._ But there was no time for further discussion, as the memory began playing out in front of their eyes.

As it had for the last two times he'd seen this memory, Harry's gaze was involuntarily drawn to the most striking of all those present, and also the most relaxed. Tom Riddle. Because he'd been – despite himself – looking at him a lot these last five days, he could recognize immediately that something was different about him. Something had changed between now – september 1942 – and the time of this memory, which going by the calendar on the desk, had happened the fourth of november, 1943.

Harry's eyes fell on his hand. Marvolo's ring. He'd already killed his father.

When the conversation began, something odd happened. The voices were too soft to be heard, as if coming from far away, and sometimes they could never be heard at all despite the fact that their lips moved normally.

"Is it... Merrythought...?" asked Voldemort.

"Tom, Tom... tell you... I must say, I wonder where you... uncanny ability... thank you... pineapples..." answered the potions master in an almost unintelligible murmur.

"Was it originally like this?" Dumbledore asked quietly during a lull in the conversation.

"No, I... I don't know what happened, sir. Maybe it because it's a second-hand memory,"

"I admit I had quite a bit of difficulty in extracting it. In fact, had it been almost anyone else, I don't think they would have managed to at all. I believe it was once again the contract, trying to protect your knowledge,"

"So you think this is, what, censored?"

"In a way, yes,"

Bits and pieces of sentences flew by for a few more minutes, then the clock chimed extremely loudly, especially compared to the low volume of the conversation, startling everyone.

"... time already!... better get going..." Slughorn noted and gestured to the door as his pupils filed out of the room after bidding him good night. All but a single one.

"... ask... something?" Tom said, studiously casual.

The memory was almost finished, and nothing had happned yet. Maybe, if Aperia was to be trusted, his return to his own time would coincide with the moment when the sands had swallowed him last time.

"... know what... is?... came across the term... didn't understand ..."

Exclamations from Slughorn. Fear. Finally the whisper, "... very Dark Art..."

Dumbledore, Harry noticed, was looking very intently. Sughorn, as he well remembered, eventually capitualed to Riddle's gentle insistence and carefully applied flattery, and began spilling the beans. His explanation, however, remained completely sealed under a heavy, perfect silence.

His lips moved, and Tom nodded, but there was no sound at all, like a muted video. In keeping with the sensation, like a glitch on a faulty television screen, half the office disappeared, subsituted for a few seconds by the image of endless sands and stone-like sky.

It went immediately back to normal, but it was startling all the same. Dumbledore hand't reacted – his eyes hadn't moved toward the glimpse of desert, he hadn't even _blinked._ He hadn't seen it.

"Merlin's beard, Tom!" Slughorn yelped suddenly, breaking the tomb-like silence, "Seven! Isn't it... enough... Of course... hypothetical, isn't it?..."

Tom left, and suddenly, loud as though spoken through a megaphone, riverberating everywhere in a deafening echo, Dumbledore's voice said clearly, "Thank you, Harry. Let us go back now..."

Harry looked at Dumbledore, confused, but found the other wizard also looking at him, even more confused. Then it hit him, and he turned around – there, a glimpse of a white beard and improbably-colored robes, quickly disappearing in the distance.

They'd been watching the memory of a memory – which meant they hadn't been the only spectators. Which also meant... Harry was there somewhere, trapped in a vortex. As he looked, the remaining Dumbledore met his eyes, beginning to say something, but was blown away by the wind in an eerie repeat of something that had yet to happen. Leaving Harry to search for himself, without success.

But then he realized something important... he was standing in the exact same spot as he had last time, and the carpet was creasing, spiralling around his feet, Slughorn's office peeling away like old paint to reveal the desertic landscape underneath, and his feet were sinking, dragging him down as though a hand had caught him by the ankle...

The fear gave way to hope for a moment – maybe he was truly going to be returned to his proper place and time, maybe Aperia knew what she was talking about, maybe –

His back hit the floor with a thud. He stayed there for a bit, his ears still adjusting and his eyes shut. He realized his breaths were too short and too fast, and put some effort into slowing down, deepening them. There was a carpet under his fingers, and he tried not to think about whether it was the red one of 'his' Dumbledore's office or the beige one of Dippet's.

Finally, muffled and from far away, Dumbledore's agitated voice, "Harry? Are you alright?"

But _which_ Dumbledore was asking?

He peeked from one half-open eye... and got a flash of auburn beard and lilac robes.

He laughed bitterly. Of course. He had known, he had _known_ it wouldn't work. And yet.

Hope was such a stupid thing.


	7. Chapter 7

"Harry?" Eric's voice held a certain level of alarm, even while he tried to keep his composure, "What are you doing here?"

It took Harry a few moments to process the question – it was something he'd been asking himself for days now. It took him even longer to come up with an answer.

"I could ask you the same thing. Pretty unlikely hour to be loitering outside the common room," he deflected instead.

It was late, a lot later than curfew. The castle was dark and quiet, the only disturbance to the painting-like stillness being the tremulous candle-lights shifting with unseen wind. Eric was the first and only person Harry had come across in the entirety of his staggering path from the headmaster's office to Ravenclaw Tower, the only one still up and about in the night, who knew why.

Eric gave a nervous laugh, scratching the back of his head. The movement and tone seemed too ordinary, too standard – fake, somehow, like someone acting out 'nervous' rather than actually being in such a state. "You're not going to believe me if I say I'm back from a nightly walk, are you?"

"No," he said honestly. _But I don't really care either_ , went unsaid.

And why would he? Eric was just a figment of the nightmare masquerading as his life. A meaningless feature of a past that had never been. An aspect of the landscape, almost, which meant that he was part of what Harry was trying to escape. His life, and all that was contained therein, was irrelevant.

Judging by his expression, Eric had caught on to his thoughts, or else was really glad that Harry wasn't exhibiting any kind of interest in his after-curfew activities.

"Alright," the Ravenclaw said finally, "I guess I'll hold back on asking why _you_ 're not sleeping either. Let's just both keep quiet and go on with our lives,"

Harry gave a vague noise of assent and stared at the wall without really seeing it.

"Alright," Eric repeated, looking slightly concerned, "Now that that's settled, maybe we should get inside,"

So saying, his dorm mate tried to tap the metal ring to the door as softly as possible. He still winced at the loud echo that resulted from it. He muttered something about the noise attracting the ubiquitous caretaker, Pringles, but Harry wasn't listening.

"How is the substance named 'agrippa' related to the wizard Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa?" the eagle knocker enquired serenely. Its sapphire eyes glowed in the dim light, and for a stupid moment Harry thought the thing was somehow staring at him in an oddly intense way, for all it was supposed to be an inanimte-ish object.

The moment was over immediately, though, and Eric, after confirming by the blank stare leveled his way that the question had gone completely over Harry's head, cleared his throat and spoke.

"Let's see... I'm pretty sure Cornelius Agrippa lived in the 1500s... but the substance agrippa was invented in the 1800s, which means he wasn't the one to discover it. The only link I can think of is that agrippa is the main igredient in the Agrippa Potion, which is used to convert lead into copper, so..."

He touched his chin pensievely – were his eyes closed? – and finally declared, "It must have been a joke at Cornelius Agrippa's expense, since he was known to have spent most of his life searching for a way to turn base metals into gold, but kept failing. And it fits because the 1800s are an era known for the decline of alchemy and the ascent of potioneers, who especially mocked all of the great alchemists that had up to that point been celebrated,"

The eagle's eyes seemed to twinkle for a moment as it commented, "Excellent reasoning,"

Eric beamed at it, and quickly dragged Harry and himself inside.

Before he could stumble to his own bed and finally either collapse in exhaustion or have a breakdown in the privacy of his canopy, Eric grabbed him by the arm and said carefully, "Harry... what's wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong,"

Eric looked extremely dubious. He began to speak, but perhaps seeing something in Harry's eyes, he pressed his lips closed, and just slowly let go, retreating towards his own bed.

"Alright, then... Alright..."

He walked _backwards_. Slowly, without making abrupt gestures, and keeping his hands well in sight. Harry was reminded of Professor Dumbledore earlier, of the way he'd moved, wary and cautious as though suspecting Harry might jump out and maul him like some wild beast if spooked.

Well.

It was not a completely baseless assumption.

Nobody asked about Harry's sudden and almost complete seclusion for the following days, but whenever he left the confines of his cobalt canopy to go to the bathroom, he could feel the stares drill the side of his head. Occasionally Stan, the only one in the fifth-year dorm possessed of a vaguely upbeat personality, would leave food for him on one of the desks lining the wall opposite to the beds.

Harry barely noticed. His isolation was not so much choice as it was a consequence of his intense, unmanageable unease.

The memory of what happened in Dumbledore's future office kept replaying in his head, over and over, more hopeless with each repetition. No matter how the angle from which he viewed it changed, it remained utterly _bleak._

The ritual... had failed.

Before Friday, he'd have said, so what? He'd been well aware that the chance of it working had been in the immediate vicinity of zero, and his expectations had been accordingly negligible. He'd been sort of... lazily hoping, but more than ready to accept defeat. But there was a great amount of difference between the ritual simply _not working,_ and the ritual very pointedly doing – whatever it was that had happened inside that memory.

The sight of the infinite desert-scape was still burned in his retinas, silent, immense, _empty_. It was simply a place, and as such didn't have – couldn't have – any kind of emotion. And yet... Harry had felt it. A sort of – displeasure. Emanating from the place, permeating the memory and the glitches (for lack of a better word) that had disturbed it. It didn't feel at all human, though, and probably it was all in Harry's head, but he could have sworn that there had been an impression of... _rebuke,_ to the whole experience.

It didn't feel like the ritual hadn't worked, but like something was willfully _denying_ his claim to the rightful place he occupied in the future.

The last few days had passed like that, with him holed up in his bed, the curtains sealed shut and impenetrable, and his knees pressed against his chest, breathing shallowly and pointlessly alert. That was all he'd been doing – sitting there, tense and exhausted, unable to go to sleep or do anything at all. He couldn't find the nerve to close his eyes, which flickered left and right every few minutes, searching for the invisible danger he knew to be hanging over his head like a sword of Damocles.

He was scared, just a tiny bit.

For the entire time since getting lost in the past, he hadn't allowed his thoughts to linger too much on Ron and Hermione, as he knew all too well how little he'd be able to function if he truly stopped to think about his position right now and the objective likelihood of ever seeing either of them again. Now though... now he indulged. Just for a little while. Since he was clearly failing to function either way.

Being here felt like summer at the Dursleys'. He was obviously and intrinsically _other_ , compared to everyone else, and there were very tangible barriers that suffocated (in this case literally) any communication between the two parties. He was longing for his other, _real_ life, just like he did every summer, and constantly feeling wrong-footed and out of place. Only this time he wasn't sure summer would ever actually _end_.

Ron and Hermione must be worried sick. The last time he'd seen them, hopped-up on Felix Felicis and heading to Hagrid's for Aragog's funeral, he'd found his two best friends' confusion at his actions fairly amusing. Now he would give anything to just see them again. To just go back to his real life.

He wanted Ron and Hermione to share his pain and help, he wanted to eat Mrs Weasley's meals and he wanted _his_ Dumbledore, put-together and always thrustworthy, to take his hopeless reality and neatly _make it right._ He wanted Hedwige.

It was Thursday, almost four days since the beginning of Harry's sequestration, when in a surprising turn of events Stan woke him in a loud and cheerful voice, and proceeded to very pointedly ignore all of his protests as he dragged him down to breakfast.

Harry had no idea what had sparked the sudden interference, as for the past days his dorm mates hadn't meddled with his self-imposed reclusion, going so far as to almost approve of it.

"He's sleeping, right?" Eric had whispered outside Harry's curtains, "That can only be a good thing. Did you see his eye bags? A couple of days of rest is the _least_ he needs,"

That had been nice of them, if a little disquieting. Why were they paying so much attention to him? Had they lied when they said they'd given up prying into his secrets? It was possible that theirs was just a façade. Still, they'd left him be and that was all that mattered.

Now though, Stan's approach prevailed – an approach that revolved around the somewhat dubious motto that loud cheer could cure any ails. If anything at all had been even vaguely normal about Harry, that might have worked. That is to say, if his ails _weren't_ related to the very fabric of the universe, the intricacies of magic as it related to the mind, and the inner workings of time and space and his place therein.

"Well... you _have_ been moping for the past five days," Eric pointed out apologetically, in response to the way Harry was glaring at Stan's excessive and offensive cheer. "And from what I can discern, that has never done any good to anybody. Plus you've missed a lot of classes, right? That's not good. And..."

He looked hesitant, and exchanged a look with Stan.

Harry said, "What,"

"Professor Hobart came looking for you on Saturday," he admitted nervously.

Oh. _Oh._ Right, he was supposed to serve his detention with the Charms instructor that day. He had forgotten so completely that the information was almost shocking. Almost – the man could go fuck himself. Another person nosing around in his business was _so_ un-needed.

Although... he admittedly didn't look like he'd take another snub lying down, especially since this detention had been occasioned by the fact that Harry hadn't shown up to the first, slightly nicer summons.

"Yeah..." Stan was saying, "He tried to force his way into our dormitory to see you, right? But Hornby was there and she gave him _the_ most convincing sob story about how disfigured you were from your sickness and how you wanted nobody to see you like that,"

"You told everyone I've been sick for these past few days?" he asked, surprised. It was a shockingly nice gesture. Why had they bothered?

"Only way to make sure you got left alone," Stan shrugged, scratching the back of his head, "You looked like you needed it. Even though you don't look any better at all. But anyway, without Olive Hornby I don't think that excuse would have worked. She's... very convincing,"

Eric nodded, eyes wide, "And Fawcett too, did you see her?"

"Yeah, the way she described the pain you were supposedly in was just... She even turned on the waterworks when Professor Hobart tried to insist," he shuddered, "Remind me never to get on their bad side,"

"I don't think you need to worry, Stan. I suspect they aren't even aware of your existence," Eric said apologetically, ignoring the way Stan clutched at his heart as if he'd been severely wounded. Then looking at Harry, "Any idea why they were protecting you, though? I've never heard of Hornby doing a kind thing for anyone in her life,"

"Unless you've bedazzled her with your charm,"

Harry stared blankly as Stan winked, grinning.

It was a good question, though. Harry turned away from the conversation as the others started eating. Nibbling reluctantly at a piece of toast, he frowned. _Why_ was everyone so nice to him? It couldn't be simple altruism, as neither Eric nor _Olive_ – whose true personality he was aware of – struck him as being the selfless type. And it wasn't as though he could ignore them – they seemed to pop up wherever he went, friendly and so very _helpful_. Consistenly getting him out of trouble at every turn, despite his extremely pronounced lack of reciprocation.

It was all so annoyingly confusing. And becoming more pressing with every day that passed, every day he remained trapped here.

Still perturbed by his ponderings, Harry made his way (i.e. was basically herded) to the first class of the day. His frustration with classes in general and the waste of time they reresented – even secluding himself and staring at the drapery seemed more productive – was doubled when he realized exactly which brand of torturous dilly-dallying he was to engage in.

Charms. _Of course_.

"Today you'll be revising the Shrinking Charm, along with its counter-spell, the Engorgemment Charm," Professor Hobart said, seemingly by rote, while glaring at Harry. "This is a spell you've learned in second year – I should think you need not be instructed any further,"

From his looming position in front of the desk, he slashed the air horizontally with his wand, so abruptly and with such visible irritation, that several people jumped in their seats. But the spell was innocuous, as its effect was simply to conjure marbles, one for each student. They were fist-sized, and interestingly, completely black, which Harry privately attributed to the Charms instuctor's present disposition.

"Man, what crawled up _his_ ass and died?" someone whispered. Eric, who was next to Harry, sent him a meaningful glance. It was an altogether unnecessary gesture, as it was quite evident how unhappy Hobart was with him by the fact that he hadn't stopped glowering in his direction since the moment he'd stepped in.

"Make the marbles shrink, then swell, then shrink again, practise changing their sizes... and try to choose the exact dimension you want the spell to achieve... I'm sure you can figure out how," he said, clearly caring very little about it all. Then he suddenly smiled. It looked more like a sneer, actually. "Evans, how nice of you to join us. I'm sure you must be wondering what exciting topic we might have covered during your tragic absence. For your information, it was the Fire-Making Charm. A measly first-year little spell, I know, but revision must be taken seriously. Of course, that kind of simple thing, you surely don't need a refresher, do you?"

Behind wire-rimmed round glasses, much smaller than his, Hobart's pale eyes stared meanly at him. Harry knew immediately what was coming, and felt his irritation rise to match the Charm professor's.

"Why don't you give us a demonstration, just so we are on the same page?"

There it was. Hobart was clearly hoping if he put him on the spot like that, he might betray something. He'd likely come to that conclusion after the fiasco with the levitating charm, which he was still struggling with. Seemingly every person in the classroom was now staring, he could feel their curiousity, their hope for something interesting to happen, their expecting glances. The eyes on him, the situation itself, it brought him back. For one painful moment he was Harry Potter, butting heads with Snape in the potions classroom. Something in his chest constricted, yearning. Even _Snape_ was something he found himself missing right now, if only because it belonged to his real life.

"Well?" Hobart snapped, breaking the moment. Harry blinked away his distraction, and took a deep breath.

He stuck his chin out. "I don't know how to cast this spell. Could I take a look at the textbook first, sir?"

"Come now, Evans. I don't believe that for a second. In fact, I think you cast it very recently. How else would you manage in Potion class?"

"I had someone else do it for me – "

"Evans, it's a first year spell, one of the most used ones, in fact. It's revised nearly every year in any institution. Now I understand if you aren't that great at it. I'm offering to critique it for you, so why don't you go on,"

"No, I really... I really don't know it. I have no idea how it's done at all,"

"Where did you go to school unil now?"

Shit, what was his cover story? "I was... erm... homeschooled,"

"You're lying,"

The standstill went on for long minutes, so long that puzzled whispers rose from the other Ravenclaws and from the Hufflepuffs. Harry maintained his stony silence, refusing to be goaded further, and Hobart seemd to understand that, because his lip curled, and he looked away first. To the other students, he finally snapped, "Well? I'm not seeing any wand-waving around here!"

Everyone startled into action, and there was a moment as rustling before a few hesitant incantaions were heard. They got onto the task, but not single-mindedly enough that they didn't notice a relevant fact: Hobart hadn't taken his customary place behind the desk with his nose in some old tome or parchment but stayed standing, leaning against his desk with his arms crossed. The irritated expression hadn't left his face, and his attention never wavered from a single point in the room – Harry.

Wisely, Harry decided to ignore him, and simply set to studying the introducory pages of the manual, and the precise movements that were to be employed for the particular charm involved. As he'd figured, this one too had been modified slightly in the future, and in this time it was somewhat more convoluted and bulky. He worked it out carefully in his head first, following the complicated sector-point instructions with difficulty. To think, the shrinking charm only involved _one_ movement in the future.

He tried it on the orb with varied success. It turned orange. Then jumped. Then slit open in the middle. But despite all that, by the end he was pretty sure he was getting close. It was rather difficult changing the very way he thought of a spell into sommething different. It wasn't just about adding or removing movements. He had to change the very identity of the spell in his head, which movements it would associate to it, and what his own magic would recognize as Shrinking charm and react to.

It was all pointless.

It was truly the last thing he wanted or needed to do right now. But it'd been a while since he'd set his mind to something other than the _impossible,_ so he found doing something that he might have a chance at achieving almost pleasant. Besides that, he welcomed anything that diverted his thoughts from the looping memory of gray sands under a black sun.

Naively, when class ended Harry made to walk out with everyone else, but perhaps he should have predicted that his life couldn't possibly have been as easy as that.

"Evans... a _word,_ "

Harry turned around and... yeah, the past hour had done nothing to sedate Hobart's irritation. He was still practically twitching.

"I expect you in my office tomorrow after breakfast," he ordered.

"After breakfast? But I've got Potions – "

"I'll sign a slip for Professor Slughorn," he cut in, "Be there, Evans, or I'll have to resort to more _unpleasant_ methods,"

Harry got through the day more or less unscathed. He retained a certain amount of irritation throughout it, feeling trapped, exhausted and threatened at random intervals. He grudgingly recognized that attending class had at least the benefit of distracting him from the world of anxious desperation that seemed to live inside him.

He'd gone to sleep with the intention of being unconscious until morning – to get into a state of more fruitful analytical calm than this barely held together mess – but, as with everything else, he hadn't had much luck with that.

So he found himself slipping out of the dormitory, either very late into the night or very early in the morning, aimlessly wandering the deserted halls, simply because he could not stay still any longer. He was exausted and too strung up at the same time. He needed to do something – but there _was_ nothing he could do.

He longed for his invisibility cloak, more than he'd done all week. Lurking in the castle at night, he'd never felt so exposed, so naked. Luckily, most of the paintings were still safely snoring away, and there wasn't a soul around.

Maybe if he looked at the stars he'd calm down. A bit of star-gazing to remind him that the universe was so much bigger than his tiny problem. Usually that would work... but right now, the thought was far less liberating that usual – his problem was _not_ tiny (unless time and space were tiny, which they really were not), and he already knew how much smaller he was than the evrything he was trying to push back against. In fact, that _was_ the whole issue.

Still, having a clear achievable goal was nice, so he went with it. A to B, sure chance of success. It was more heartening than he might have admitted.

The conventional way to the Astronomy Tower passed too close to the teachers' quarters for Harry's liking, so he headed to one of the secret passages he knew, on the second floor, that though longer and twistier, would bring him to his destination undisturbed.

"Oh, great." the full-figure portrait of Hugo the Hospitable sneered, "Just when I thought I could go a couple of months without some drooling welp desecrating my nose,"

Harry very unapologetically knocked seven times on the painted man's nose – an enormous, red, potato-like protrusion – and watched it spring open, ignoring the obscenities it was mumbling. He already had a leg inside the hole, ready to descend the tiny, tight staircase, when his usual luck decided to make itself manifest. In the worst possible way.

"Interesting time to be taking a stroll," a velvety voice remarked from right behind him.

Startled, Harry almost lost his footing, and the only thing that saved him from taking a very ugly tumble down the stairs was a cold hand catching his elbow and one around his middle, holding him steady. His mind went blank, and he practically threw himself out of the portrait-hole, pushing away the helping hands with as much strength as he had in his body.

"Riddle," he acknowledged warily. His brain was still fighting the thought of Voldemort's hand on his chest, so close to his heart, so cold to the touch that he'd felt the iciness of it through his shirt and robes.

"I'm wounded," Riddle said. The easy, relaxed posture didn't quite eclipse his narrowed eyes. "I'm hardly leprous, you know,"

"I just don't like being touched," he said quickly, "And who knows if I'll get static again, right? Last time my arm took a while to recover. Wouldn't want to risk it,"

Tom inclined his head, perhaps conceding the point, perhaps thinking back to their mysteriously electric handshake.

"More importantly," Harry said, regretting having brought that up, "What are _you_ doing here? We seem to run into each other an awful lot, don't you think – even in the middle of the night,"

It might have been an impression, but the young Voldemort looked, somehow, less perfect than usual. There was something tired about him, and the skin underneath his eyes was smudged gray. It wasn't very obvious at all – in fact, he still looked better than most people at their best.

Riddle gave an easy smile, "I'm not sure what you wish to imply,"

"I'm sure you do. This thing of you inexplicably appearing out of thin air wherever I go isn't normal. Are you actually... _stalking_ me?"

Tom's lips creased in the absolute _least_ innocent smile a human face was capable of. "I just don't want you to feel lonely,"

Harry stared at him in speechless disbelief for several seconds, very nearly gaping.

"Well, this is awkward," Hugo muttered from the other side of the portrait-door, the sound muffled by the wall. Harry couldn't agree more, if the word 'awkward' also covered the vague horror currently lurking in his stomach. Voldemort making jokes. His very _soul_ shuddered at the thought.

And – he seemed to have developped some kind of interest in Harry. That was... bad. Very bad indeed.

"And speaking of which, what a stroke of luck, finding you here," Riddle murmured, completely ignoring both the grumpy painting and Harry's thoughts, "Your elusiveness is getting to be legendary – but I've finally got you where you won't _run_ like you usually do. Now, do say, Evans – have we ever met before you came to Hogwarts?"

Evans forced a wide-eyed smile, " _Of course_ not,"

"Hmm. Then where does all your resentment towards me come from?"

"Honestly Riddle, you're imagining things. Resentment is truly the last thing on my mind," He did try to inject the right amount of cordiality and wonder into the words, but it came out rather flat. He was so not in the mood for this. "Really, you've got the wrong impression,"

"Do I?" Riddle said curiously as he took a languid step forward. There was a threatening quality to it, enforced by his sheer presence, the power of which was so much more suffocating from up close. "Every time we speak your foremost desire appears to be fleeing as far away from my person as can be physically achieved, as quickly as politeness will allow. Sometimes _quicker_ than politeness allows," he added.

Alright...so Harry was as far from subtlety as Blast-Ended Skrewts were from ideal pet animals. He'd been sorted into Gryffindor for a reason, dammit.

"Even a few moments ago when I kept you – quite generously, I should think – from an ungraceful and painful descent down those stairs, you looked rather... displeased. Frantic, even," Riddle continued, lending a bit more depth to the seansation of surreality that had permeated pretty much every single moment of his life since coming to the past. He was having a conversation about feelings. With _Voldemort_.

"You say it was caused by your dislike of physical contact, but the evidence suggests otherwise; the level of invasiveness you accepts from many other recently-met peers, such as Eric Wilkes or Stanley Branston – or even Myrtle Warren - far exceeds my own seconds-long grasp, yet you've never displayed a reaction similar to the one you did with me just now. In addition to that, the desire to hex me seems to have been haunting you since we first met, a desire you've seemed to be on the verge of succumbing to on various occasions,"

He gave a wry and charmingly perpexed smile, like Harry was some kind of rare beast born of a curious quirk of nature, unexplainable by normal biology.

"Not to mention the sheer amount of time you spend glaring at me at meals and in class when you think I can't see you. Even now you look like you are in pain simply being in my vicinity."

"Riddle..." Harry said, making very little effort to conceal the distaste from his voice, "I'm sure you had a point somewhere in there, but the only thing I can focus on right now is the fact that you really, _really_ need a hobby,"

"My point, Evans, is very simple – you resent me, and I want to know _why,_ "

"No, really... you're reading too much into this," Harry insisted, "Why would I hate you, right? We met a week ago. And why do you care so much, anyway – we aren't even in the same House! It doesn't matter!"

Tom took another step forward, now effectively crowding him against the stretch of wall next to the portrait-hole. His eyes were hooded and lowered, and his expression...

"Just now, you told me to get a hobby – but how could I possibly do that? I can scarcely remember the last time someone piqued my interest so effectively and completely. In a castle packed with such... dull, utterly _boring_ , empty-headed dimwits, you alone stand out to me," he murmured. He was very close now, and one of his fingers was hooked around a lock of hair behind Harry's ear, "Such an enigma – it might be the first time I've ever come across someone as wrapped in mystery as you are... so full of unexplainable facets... so steeped in contradictory details and mesmerizing ambiguities..." there was an icy shock as Tom's finger slid down his neck, right over his wildly pulsating artery, "That I find myself simply unable to tear my gaze away,"

His brain was more than halfway frozen, and then – Riddle's eyes were right there, millimeters away from his own – burgundy, cold, utterly _empty –_

"Enough of this bullshit," he heard himself snap.

He was unexplainably out of breath as he pushed away the future Voldemort. It felt very much like he'd just escaped certain death. At least, his adrenalin seemed to think so.

"Laying it on a bit thick, there," he remarked, still unable to breathe normally, "That kind of talk only belongs in regency novels, you know,"

Head cocked to one side, Tom was giving him a puzzled and slightly frustrated look.

"Look, let's be honest here," Harry said slowly. He was so done with this, with everything, "We both know this isn't really about me. You're just bitter because your tricks aren't working. And really, I _tried_ to pretend they did, and you could've just been satisfied with that, but _no,_ you had to go and make it personal!"

This was probably a mistake, but _Merlin_ it felt good. He'd been playing polite all this time, but finally talking straight, finally putting that little shock on his face... it was nice. For his mental health, if nothing else.

"And really – do you know how many people are in this castle?" he continued, unable to stop, "You have them all dancing on the palm of your hand. If you needed your ego stroked that badly you could've asked literally _anybody else,_ "

Now, Harry wasn't an expert in Voldemort or anything (though, he kind of was), but he'd have expected him to get angry. Hex him, maybe start yelling. Or, perhaps, try to salvage the situation with some carefully applied charm and good manners. Maybe deny it with his masterful innocent act.

He did not expect him to laugh.

"I may have over-perfomed it," he said when the moment of bizarre hilarity had passed, "But the sentiment wasn't an act – you are, as a matter of fact, extremely intriguing. I am looking forward to unwrapping your many layers of mystery,"

 _Why_.

"Could you please _not_? I literally just asked to be left alone,"

There was definite humor in the curve of Riddle's smirk, "Do I look like a genie to you? Receiving doesn't automatically follow asking,"

Harry was about to reply, or possibly punch the bastard in the face, when a loud, hacking cough echoed from behind the corner, along with the soft sound of footsteps. Both their heads snapped towards the sound at the same time, suddenly alert.

"That's Pringles. The caretaker," Tom said softly, brow creased in displeasure, "He has some kind of lung disease, which detracts from his ability to sneak up on anybody. He'll hang you by the thubs if he catches you out of bed," he added as an afterthought.

Great, the embodiement of Filch's dreams was here.

Tom motioned him towards the secret passage, "I'm a prefect, so I'm fine, but you should run now,"

Harry, at a loss for both words and facial expressions, just ducked inside the portrait-hole ("No, already? And I was so loving staring at this wall for the past half hour," Hugo muttered). Just as he was about to click the portrait shut behind himself, Tom called, "Oh, and Evans?"

He leaned in. "Don't think for _a moment_ that we aren't going to have a nice little chat about why you know so many secret passages despite having been here scarcely two weeks,"

When Harry stepped out of the oaken doors of the Great Hall after a half-hearted drink of pumpkin juice and a few bites of toast that might have passed for breakfast, he found Professor Hobart waiting for him in front of the staircase, apparently unperturbed by the curious glances of _everybody_.

"I don't trust you to make it to my office on your own," he explained, turning around and waiting for him to follow, "I wouldn't want to risk you _forgetting,_ or getting sick again, or Merlin knows what else. Nothing would surprise me at this point,"

As they walked, Harry glanced longingly at the staircase, wondering if he could dash fast enough to make it far enough that he'd lose the nosy professor.

He wouldn't go through with it obviously – Hobart was nothing if not persistent. It would be by far quicker and less painful to humor him this once and avoid future annoyances. He did not want to know what he'd meant by 'more unpleasant methods'. He was pretty unpleasant as it was, to be honest.

And it was already bad enough that he had _one_ annoying bastard after his secrets – he really didn't need another. Which...

Last night had been a complete and unadulterated disaster. The one point he'd been sure of since landing here had been: avoid the notice of Lord fucking Voldemort; and now it seemed he getting stalked by him. He peered behind his shoulder nervously, but there were only people hurrying to get to class on time.

The whole conversation had been fairly bizarre. It had been bizarre, but...

When he'd gotten back to his bed, he'd managed to fall asleep, at least for the few hours left before breakfast time. And he'd slept rather well, too. It was as if the encounter had cut through the haze of fear and inaction he'd been paralysed by. After all, Voldemort was the one thing he could never have managed to deem pointless and unreal.

His thoughts were interrupted as the march ended with them both in front of an unremarkable wooden door. Something metal winked in Hobart's hand, an old fashioned brass key, and then they were inside.

The office was surprisingly orderly. No, more than orderly... sparse. In fact, the décor was best described as spartan – nothing frivolous in sight, everything simple and stark. The desk was entirely devoid of any trinkets, paperweights, writing implements, or anything, really. The walls were just as bare of paintings or decorations, and the only sign of personality was the immense amount of books stored in the simple shelves lining the walls. Even the windows lacked curtains.

All in all there was very little to indicate that a person and not some kind automaton lived here.

Professor Hobart settled himself in a simple hardwood chair with his elbows on the edge of the desk and fingers steepled in front of his mouth. Behind the thick glasses, his sharp hazel eyes shone with the unnervingly intent look Harry was growing increasingly familiar with. The irritation seemed to have left place to a sort of eager satisfaction at having him finally where he wanted him.

"Sit,"

Harry did so without a word. The wooden chair was exactly as uncomfortable as it had looked, but it was true that the man didn't really seem the type for cushions. Even he himself didn't have one.

"Finally a chance to talk you and me tete à tete, Evans," he said, unblinking, "You've been rather hard to pin down, I hope you know that. I'd almost say your rudeness was shocking, since you refused my offers of guidance not just once but _twice –_ but I understand you've been fairly writhing in agony these past few days –" he gave an umistable sneer at that, "And speaking of that, I trust you're recovered from your Green Flu?"

"My – ? Oh, right, yes of course. I'm healthy," he said, very aware of how unconvincing that sounded.

Even _less_ convincing was Hobart's smile, which contained altogether too many teeth and no sign of joy. "Now that small talk is out of the way –" he said suddenly, leaning forward, "Finally a chance to dispel the fog of speculation and mystery surrounding your person. Tell me, Evans, _who_ are you really?"

"Believe me, sir, there's really nothing special about me – I just happen to be in the iddle of this _… thing,_ that really doesn't have much to do with me at all,"

" _Do_ describe this 'thing'," he said interestedly.

Trying not to sound too belligerant he clarified, "I can't – I already told you, sir, I can't say anything about _anything,_ "

"I don't expect you to spill the beans on all of it... but surely you can provide a little summary, without any compromising details... just a broad overview, so to speak..." Hobart cajoled, waving away his concerns, "Of course you have my word it would be strictly in confidence,"

"I'm telling you, it's not that I don't want to," though he certainly didn't, "It's just that there's... something... physically preventing me from speaking about my circumstances,"

"Something? Something like a curse? An oath?"

"I can't tell you that either,"

"Can you write it?"

"No," Harry said tightly.

"Liar. You haven't tried it," Hobart said with an odd amount of certainty, and immediately pushed a fresh parchment and a quill under Harry's nose expectantly.

Maybe he could pretend –

"I can tell you're faking it,"

God _dammit._ He took a few seconds to breathe and, then put quill to paper again.

Well, there was only to hope the contract would keep up its impenetrability like it had until now. Trepidantly, he started to write, slowly, hoping to be stopped soon. Hobart was staring, completely enraptured, curved over the parchment in a way that made Harry rather uncomfortable. His heart skipped a beat when he was able to complete the words _'It's a'_ and then _'magical'_ without any trouble. It would figure the only person he didn't want knowing anything about all of this – besides Riddle – would be the only one who ended up getting all the information.

He could already see himself in detention forever, just writing out the story of his life and his time-related troubles like a glorified scribe.

But to his unsending relief, his attempt to spell 'contract' was met with very definite resistance. His quill stopped before he could even begin the first letter of the word, as though a hand was physically wrapped around his own, keeping him from moving it. Exerting force on it didn't have any kind of effect – it was unmovable. Ink started spreading from his quill, as he was not moving it, forming a large blot.

Harry looked up at Hobart, ready to give him a challenging stare, but found him furiously taking notes. What a creep.

A few seconds later, when he looked to be finished, he sighed, "I suppose you can't write anything either. What a difficult situation,"

Harry took the chance to say, "Well, I guess I'll be going then, sir," and started to get up.

"Wait!"

After the sudden shout, Hobart seemed to deflate like a balloon whose knot had come undone. He sighed defeatedly and hunched down, massaging his brow. It was slightly shocking, since he hadn't seen the man be anything but unpleasant and abrasive until now, shocking enough, in fact, that Harry stopped in his tracks. The man looked honestly dejected, almost pathetically so.

"It is obvious I won't be able to ask much more, since you do seem unable to answer in any way... but at least _try_ – just try – to answer one, last question?"

"Last question?"

"I promise I will leave you alone after that," Hobart pleaded.

Harry exhaled through his nose and frowned. "If you'll leave me alone...And only _one_ question,"

"Just one," he nodded desperately. With a hopeful look, he wondered, "I was curious about that unusually-shaped scar on your forehead... what on earth might have caused it?"

"I'm sorry to say, but there's really nothing special about this. It was accident. I fell – "

"I can tell that's not the truth," he sounded so sad and apologetic, that Harry almost felt bad.

"Alright," he said, stalling. He was thinking furiously, trying to come up with a reason that made sense for someone to have a lightning bolt-shaped scar on their face. "Alright, it was a lie. The truth is less simple. It wasn't an accident. I didn't fall down. In truth, someone carved it on my forehead deliberately in this shape, with a knife. I – "

"I can _tell_ that's not the truth either. Stop trying to lie, please. Please, Evans, just this, then I won't ever bother you again,"

How could he tell so easily? Was he some kind of truth-sniffer?

"Alright. Fine," he licked his teeth, his brain positively pulsating with the amount of strain he was putting on it. Since travelling back in time, he'd had to exercise his mental functions so much that it was almost impressive that his previous life had involved so little mental effort. Well, not _little._ But at least back there there'd been Ron, and most of all Hermione to pick up the slack.

He ignored the pang of longing, and focused on the situation. Hobart was staring beseechingly at him, waiting.

Clearly, the man was somehow able to tell whether he told the truth or not. So lying was clearly not an option. At the same time though, it was also obvious he wouldn't let him go until the question was answered in _some_ form, so trying to say something _really_ incriminating and just choking for a few minutes wasn't likely to be a viable course of action either. So he had to somehow tell the truth without alerting the contract, but also not telling the _actual_ truth without alerting Hobart's weird lie radar.

Several scenarios and ideas flashed through his head, as the seconds ticked away. He knew he couldn't stay silent any longer.

 _Okay. Alright_. He took a deep breath. Here went nothing.

"When I was a baby," he said slowly, carefully, "A trespasser battled my parents. They – " _didn't make it._ The words were kept from leaving his mouth, so he rephrased, "I survived,"

By Hobart's expression, it was clear he'd heard the unuttered _'only'_ that should've preceded the sentence.

"During the confusion, I was left with – " he felt his windpipe spasm, but it was obvious what he was talking about, so he finished anyway, "From a spell,"

Hopefully it would sound like it had been stray spell, and not the very intentional killing curse it had actually been. Calling Voldemort a mere trespasser when he'd at one point – or two – held the wizarding world at his feet felt like a dirty lie, but it was _technically_ true that he had trespassed on the Potters' property that day in Godric's Hollow.

The Charms professor seemed satisfied this time. Although he noted, "I can see some sort of dark magic residue around it – was it from a curse? Was the trespasser some kind of dark wizard? Was he with Grindelwald?"

Sure that the contract would stop him, he said, "He was a – " _Death Eater._ He shrugged 'apologetically' _,_ "Well, that's all I've got. Can I go now, sir?"

Hobart's face changed expression with unnatural speed, settling into a very smug smile. Harry stiffened.

"So you can talk about _some_ things... " he said consideringly, "Perhaps make some vague statements, allusions... Where were you born?"

"You said that was the last question and then you'd leave me alone!" Harry snapped, jumping out of his chair. Hobart wasn't even fazed.

"Well, you're right, I did say that. You can go – for today," the professor promised. There was a look of glee in his eyes, "Have a good day, Evans,"

Harry did not answer lest a snarl came out of his mouth instead of words, and stormed out. Once in the corridor, he threw himself down the stairs without looking back, but not without pettily slamming the door shut behind him.

He was so angry he didn't even notice where he was going until he found himself stupidly in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady.

"Are you looking for someone?" she asked curiously, eyeing his blue and bronze tie with suspicion, "I can't let you in even if you are. I'll consider it if you know the password though,"

here was a lup in his throat as he shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.

"Oh, well. Why are you here then, honey? If you came to admire the artistry of my splendid form, I won't hold it agaist you," she said, striking an aristocratic pose and subtly kicking a wine bottle behind the folds of her dress with a dainty foot.

Harry felt an unexected wave of affection for her. He hadn't realized he'd missed her as well, but she _had_ been one of the constants of his daily life for years. And now, here, she was so familiar, and yet so foreign... and she didn't know him. Obviously.

It took him several seconds to reluctantly tear himself away from her and toward the Ravenclaw tower, ignoring her yells for him to come back and look at another pose.

It was only upon arriving in front of the eagle knocker that he realized he was, for the very first time, alone before it.

He sighed to himself as he prepared to sit down in front of it – it wouldn't be the first time he waited for long minutes until another student, a _real_ Ravenclaw, would come along and help him out. Although on all the other occasions there'd always been a few first-years around in the same situation.

Just for form's sake he knocked the thing and waited. Who knew, maybe a stroke of luck would make it ask something he actually knew, for a change.

Of course, nothing of the sort happened.

There was an odd moment where Harry was almost sure the sapphire jewels it had in place of eyes were glowing strangely, were shining in a most peculiar manner they had never done before – almost as if the bronze eagle was in fact _looking_ straightat him –

"Harry Evans," the knocker said – startling him badly – with its usual oddly melodious voice, "Finally. I've been waiting to catch you alone,"


End file.
